


Cold, Dark, Deep

by WillyShakesqueer13



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: And how it came to be, Gen, Max and Eleven friendship, Original Monster - Freeform, Some pretty dramatic fight scenes tbh, Steve and Max team up, Steve is best mum, Troy the douchebag strikes again, Will has Powers, kinda gory, series 2.5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2020-05-13 20:10:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 28
Words: 51,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19258339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillyShakesqueer13/pseuds/WillyShakesqueer13
Summary: When Mike and Eleven discover an abandoned, flooded test quarry, they spark a chain of events that lead to major changes in their newfound family. Through the fights and the fear, Max strives to form a bond with Eleven, Will harbours a dark secret, and Troy resurfaces to get his revenge on the boy who stole his popularity away from him.





	1. Chapter 1

“It’s been a year and a half. You would’a thought they’d have come up with something new by now.” Mike Wheeler thrust his hands deeper into his jeans pockets, scuffing the loose gravel of the old quarry road with the dusty toe of his shoe. “I guess ‘zombie boy’ was the smartest thing the Zimmermans ever came up with. Bunch of-”

“Mouthbreathers.” Trudging beside him, Eleven quietly finished his sentence without a thought. Mike smirked. He was forever glad he’d taught her that word – it played so gracefully from her tongue.

A walk to Sattler’s Quarry and back wasn’t much of a date, in his eyes. He’d rather take her shopping, or maybe down to the new burger joint that had taken over Benny’s. Mike had been saving up for it: washed the car three times; mowed the lawn, five. The problem being, of course, that they were still only six months into Hopper’s _Year of Laying Low_ , before he’d allow ‘Jane’ to hit the streets and start being an actual person.

You know, instead of a fugitive.

It wasn’t just Mike who was getting frustrated, of course – the wait was tearing El apart. Cooped up inside, unable to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. Even regular visits from the Party and unlimited tv could only go so far. El was furiously bored, and beginning to display a temper to go with it.

That’s why Hopper had relented (albeit after three weeks of nagging) when they’d suggested walking in the woods. As long as they stayed away from Hawkins town, away from civilisation. No risks. No funny business. _“And no powers. That’s a rule.”_

El caught Mike staring at her and cocked an eyebrow.

He flushed, turning away, pretending not to hear her snicker. “Anyway, I keep telling him to ignore them, but you know Will…”

“…Mike?” It was that quiet, light voice she only used for serious questions.

“Yeah?”

Without having to look at him, her fingers found his and they tangled together. “School… what is it like?”

Mike snorted involuntarily. “School? School is boring, El.”

Her gaze flashed to his face, unreadable. “You don’t like it?”

“No. I mean, does anyone?”

El seemed to consider this. “Are you… okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Why?”

Their entwined hands hung loosely between them.

“Something’s wrong. At school.”

Mike stared into the trees. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

El dropped his hand, her feet halting. “Mike.”

He turned back to her, surprise pressing his eyebrows into his hair. “What?”

“Friends don’t lie.”

Sudden, unbidden anger flashed through his chest, and he balled his hands into fists. That immovable, steely look in her eye, normally so fierce and brave and impressive, was suddenly infuriating. They had to do this now? He’d come out for a nice afternoon walk, not a damn interrogation.

“I’m not lying,” he snapped. “I just don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I don’t!”

She was silent at that, considering him carefully.

“School is the worst, El. It’s like torture every single day.”

El’s fingers curled at the word. _Torture_. Before he’d even finished speaking, he knew he’d fucked up, but it was already too late to take it back. Instead, it was all he could do to watch the myriad emotions pass through her soft features, coming to rest at a furious indignance.

“You… You get to go there. Every day.” The hurt in her voice was unmistakeable. “You see your friends all the time. And I’m stuck here.”

Mike sighed, dropping his fists. She had a point. “Look, El, I’m sorry, okay? It’s just… that’s not all that happens at school. That’s only the best bit, there’s more things, worse things…”

It took him a moment to realise she wasn’t listening. Not in a stuck up, argumentative way, either. It was like something had touched her, brushed against the edges of her attention and was drawing her to it.

“…El?”

Her lashes flickered, head slowly turning towards the hedge. A ball of fear settled uncomfortably in his stomach. There was something oddly unreadable in her expression, her quiet stillness, that put him on edge.

It took him a moment to recognise what she was looking at. A dark hole in the foliage, the ground within it trampled to dust by countless pairs of feet. A pathway like a tunnel, a portal to another dimension…

Slowly, she lifted a pointing finger. “Where… is that?”

Taking a few tentative steps towards her for a better look, Mike bit his lip. “I don’t know. Some kids dare each other to go up there sometimes, but… I’ve never been.”

“Dangerous?”

He shrugged. “Probably not.”

Couldn’t shake those heebie-jeebies, though.

Without warning, El sprang forward up the slope and pressed her way though the gap, disappearing from sight.

“El!”

He only hesitated for half a second before plunging in himself.

The world turned into an endless mass of green, branches scratching, leaves rustling, darkness suffocating. Mike couldn’t open his eyes, pushing blindly forward, swimming through the green. It felt like rushing through a corn maze, or sprinting round a crop circle, following the opening on and on, round and round…

He stumbled as the gripping branches fell away and he broke through to fresh air. Bits and pieces peppered his clothing, and he had to shake it from his hair, but when he opened his eyes, the sight stunned him dead.

El was just a few paces away, equally still, staring, just staring, at the endless face of rock that towered above them. The walls stretched around, enclosing them within a quarry cell. It must have been a test face, somewhere they started mining and then gave up, moved on around the corner to Sattler’s. The fissure was almost entirely filled with freezing black water, save for the shore they stood on that crept not more than three feet out under the surface before plunging straight down into the deep.

Mike whistled through his teeth and marvelled at the echo that rippled around the face and over the water. The lake shore was coarse sand, occasionally punctuated with scrubby tufts of grass, in between which were tucked old beer cans and plastics, slowly rusting and rotting in seclusion. He took a carefully aimed kick at a bottle, watched it skitter across the ground and come to rest a few feet away.

“This is so cool. Wait till Lucas, Will and Dustin see this…”

It was only when he heard the odd, stuttering breath from behind him that he realised that Eleven hadn’t moved.

“…El? You okay?”

A shiver ran through him at the sight of her, frozen at the shore, staring into the murky depths of the water as though there was something down there, drawing her in…

Her eyes drifted closed, rolling back and forth beneath her eyelids, her whole body tense, like a coiled spring, so tense she was twitching. He watched helplessly as her fingers clenched and unclenched, a sharp, cold spear of familiar dread piercing through his spine. He knew that look. He’d seen it before.

Different person. Different place.

The same look.

“El!” Terror drove him towards her, before he even realised his feet were moving. “El, can you hear me?!” Nothing. No movement. Mike gripped her tightly, like he could somehow pull her back. He clasped her face in his palms, stared at her blank expression as it grew slowly more terrified. Her shallow, sharp huffs grew more urgent, her lips twisting to form words-

“No… no…”

Her breath sounded as though it was caught in her chest.

And then she choked.

Red blood spattered the sand, blossoming into the water – Mike only just side-stepped out of the way. El violently doubled over, crying out, clutching at her head.

He gripped her for grim death, leaning down, trying to get a look at her face, though he almost immediately wished he hadn’t. Crimson streaked the skin beneath her nose, draining into her mouth, her clutching hands smearing the blood from her lips and her ears over her face. God, it was on her shirt. It was everywhere.

“El, what is it? What’s happening?”

Her only answer was a scream.

Then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped. El crashed to her knees, clinging to his shirt and dragging him down with her. Mike pulled her closer, put his forehead to hers, but she was drifting, slipping away, fast, too fast…

_Oh, God, Please…_

_Not again._

 

~*~

 


	2. Chapter 2

One day, Max was going to pluck up the courage to ask Neil for a bike of her own. Next birthday, perhaps, and if not then, well, there was always Christmas.

The rack on the back of Lucas’s bike was less than comfortable, no matter how many towels she folded up and strapped to it with bungee cord - legs cramped up beneath her and feet twisted inwards to rest on the jutting wheel bearing. She’d take a Camero any day. Preferably without her brother behind the wheel.

“Try another channel!” Lucas shouted back to her.

With one arm around the boy’s chest, Max used the other to fumble one-handed with the Super-comm. “Easier said than done,” she snarled.  Oh, what she’d give for something hand-sized.

Lucas put his head down, his legs working the pedals furiously, sweat beginning to shine on his brow. The quarry road opened up on their left and they swung onto it, the bike wobbling as it found the loose gravel, almost tipping completely before Lucas found his balance again.

Max squeaked. “Hey, careful!”

“I mean, the extra weight is not exactly helping!”

“Hey!”

It was true, though. What with the steady incline, the loose ground, and the dead weight on the back, they found themselves slowly grinding to a halt. Even as Lucas kicked back a couple of gears, it was clear they weren’t going to make it. He stuck out a leg, letting the wheels roll to a swift halt, and Max hopped off the back, fidgeting as he swung his leg over the saddle and started walking. The bike remained at his side.

“Lucas.”

“What?”

“Leave it. We’ll come back.” She tossed him the Super-comm. “See what you can do with this.”

The road was a killer. Cut into the hillside, it was dead straight and deceptively long, made for heavy lorries that struggled with twists and turns. That meant it only turned corners when it had to. Which was almost never.

It was about halfway up the endless track that Max first spotted something moving. Lucas was too absorbed in tweaking the frequency of the radio, holding the antenna in different directions in the hopes of picking something up. But Max stopped in her tracks, staring, her skin crawling.

Just coming around the only corner, a stumbling figure had appeared. From this distance, it had one arm, four legs, a bulbous, angular body…

Two heads.

Max began to run.

Behind her, Lucas’s cry of confusion turned to a wail of recognition: “ _Mike!_ ”

The closer she got, the faster the silhouette turned from one body into two. Mike was staggering under the weight of the girl hanging limp from his shoulder. If Eleven was even conscious, it was only barely - head down, feet dragging – and her boyfriend was really struggling to stay upright (from what Max had heard, Mike wasn’t exactly naturally strong).

His face lit up at the sight of his friends, until something seemed to flick a switch behind his eyes and he… frowned? Max let it slide, leading the charge up the path, sprinting right up until the point El lifted her head – and skidding to an untimely halt.

“Holy shit!” The words flew unbidden from her lips as Lucas crashed into her shoulder. “What the fuck, Mike?”

There was blood, so much blood – Max’s stomach churned.

Mike squealed indignantly: “I didn’t do anything!”                                                                                                                                       

Without warning, El’s knee gave, twisting inwards, and the sudden weight dragged the two of them down into an ungainly heap. Mike’s shaking hand on her ribs and his frantic cries did nothing to rouse her – her eyes rolled helplessly, daring to fight against sleep.

Max froze, just for a second. She’d seen a kid resuscitated once, back in California. Skate ramp accident. It was all _press on his chest, kiss of life, keep his airways clear_. She could do that. Probably. Maybe.

Tears were gathering beneath Mike’s eyes, and it was a good job that Lucas pulled him back as Max knelt beside El, because if he didn’t stop screaming, she was gonna sock him in the mouth. She took El’s jaw in one hand, tilting her head back, finally taking a good look. And yes, it was bad – really bad. Her face was caked with drying blood – it was all over her shirt, in her hair, on her hands. Mostly from her nose, by the looks of it, though it trailed down her neck from her ears too.

“Holy shit…”

Lucas gabbed Mike to stop him pacing. “What the hell happened, man?”

“Th-there was something in the water…”

He clasped his friend’s shoulder tightly. “What was it?”

Mike threw him off, unusually aggressive. “I don’t know, I didn’t see it,” he snarled.

“Whoa, chill, man! We’re just tryna help!”

El’s eyes opened blearily, barely focusing. Her brow creased like she was trying to work out how Mike had suddenly lost five inches and turned ginger. Then, slowly, very carefully, she tried to lever herself up.

Ordinarily, Max would’ve stopped her, but right now, the need to get her to a safe space was outweighing that duty of care.

She blew out her cheeks, her heart pounding already. El was hardly keeping herself awake, hiccupping and heaving for breath, fresh blood coating her lips in a sickening crimson gloss. And she was shaking – not _chilly in winter_ shaking, but full on, bone-tired, muscle-weak trembling. Without a second thought, Max unzipped her green hoodie and threw it over the other girl’s shoulders.

She wouldn’t call it a ‘friendship’, what she had with El. More of a mutual respect, a working relationship for the sake of the rest of the Party. For a start, they hardly knew each other. But now, with how awfully vulnerable and hurt El looked, Max couldn’t help but feel something stir deep within her. She cared. She really _cared_.

“Come on,” She muttered, reaching forward and trying to take one of El’s arms, but the girl flinched back sharply. Her frightened eyes bored distrustfully into Max’s.

 _Oh, will you cut it out for once,_ the other girl thought bitterly. _You’re half-dead and you still wanna look at me like I’m gonna steal your friends away from you._

“El, come on, let me help you.”

She sagged, looking away, and Max took that as permission to take one of her wrists, then the other, and roughly shove them into the arms of her hoody. Zipping it up, Max then pulled the hood up over El’s head, hiding, for the most part, the mess she’d made of her face.

“We’re taking a shortcut,” she nodded definitively.

Mike’s face twisted with horror. “ _What?_ ”

“Straight across Kerley. It’s not far, and besides, it’s the middle of the day – who’s gonna be around?”

“No. We can’t risk it.”

She scoffed, rising, a hand waving in El’s direction. “And you really think she can walk the long way?”

He looked down at his girlfriend, and Max watched the knot tighten between his eyebrows. His gaze flashed to Lucas, who shrugged, trying to keep out of it. When Mike didn’t relent, however, the other boy sighed.

“She has a point.”

“Of course you’d side with her,” Mike spat bitterly.

“Because she’s right!” Lucas bristled.

Max looked between them. _They can cut it right out, too._ Every second wasted was another drop of El’s strength gone.

“Lucas, gimme a lift,” she said, taking a knee and slipping one of El’s arms over her shoulder.

As the boy bounded over, Mike’s widened even further. “Why him?”

“Because you’re like a foot taller than me, genius. You look out for anyone coming.”

Silent and tense, Mike reluctantly turned to take the lead, only waiting long enough for them to lift El to her feet before striding off down the road.

“And hey! If you’re feeling generous, you can grab Lucas’ bike on the way through!”

 

~*~

 

In an otherwise empty street, the four figures stumbling together down the road made an odd sight. Lucas, Mike and Max, of course, he already knew, but as for the fourth, Troy was left guessing. A girl, clearly – even their little fag friend couldn’t pull off that amount of femininity.

Those nerds hanging around with one girl was weird enough. Troy narrowed his eyes. There was something about her. Something oddly… familiar.

Somehow, like she sensed something, the girl in the green hoody lifted her head. There was something all over her face – impossible to tell what, from this distance. It was her dark eyes, though. The shiver that raced down his spine sent him scurrying away from the window, into the darkest corner of the room, arm twinging, like it remembered too.

It was her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely comments I recieved on the last chapter! I'm hoping to get this at least near to completion by the time Season 3 hits, but we'll see! I do have a good buffer ready-built...
> 
> WSQ


	3. Chapter 3

El was only just beginning to regain her strength when she saw the shabby cabin come into view, nestled between the bare trees. The familiar cracked glass panes and scuffed wooden panels would normally have filled her with warmth. Today, however, it only put her on edge. Hopper was home  – she could feel the raw buzz of current from the television, even from out here. It filled her head with uncomfortable static. She was… what was the word? _Sore._

Fighting the wobbling of her legs, she dug her heels into the leaf-strewn ground, pulling back on Max and Lucas’ shoulders. Their concerned gaze was almost immediately upon her.

“Hey, are you ok?” Max murmured

She stuck her jaw out, looking between her and the closed cabin door.

“What is it, El?” Mike’s voice was soft as he halted, all the sharp, silent tension draining from his body, replaced by a twitch of fear.

“We…” She stopped abruptly, eyes widening at her feeble croak. “We can’t,” she tried again, but it wasn’t much better.

Lucas frowned, “Why not?”

“He’s in there.”

“So?”

How, exactly, could she put it into words? Hopper was - was - _complicated_ , and _difficult_ , and sometimes just _angry_. And Mike was right. She wouldn’t be allowed out again, and that was something she couldn’t possibly bear. Not again.

“No,” She whispered. It was all she had.

The familiar squeak of un-oiled metal caught her ear, and her stomach plunged as she looked up to find Hopper standing on the porch, unlit cigarette clasped in between his lips and a lighter frozen mid-way to lighting it. The door swung closed behind him.

“…Okay?” He finally grumbled, confusion lilting his tone. “’There a reason you kids are out here?”

El took a moment to consider. Her adoptive father – she still had to kick herself every time she thought about it – was squinting at them suspiciously. Maybe he was trying to work out who’s hoody she was wearing, or, more probably, why she had the hood up.

Maybe she couldn’t run, but she still had a choice. On the one hand, Mike was right – if Hopper thought she was in danger, going anywhere would become a lot more difficult. On the other hand… well, she was tired. _Really_ tired. And honestly, she just wanted her dad.

El released her grip on her friends, took two steps forward, and pulled the hood back from her face.

“ _Jesus_.” Hopper cleared the porch steps in a heartbeat, hurrying down the slope towards them. She’d expected anger, or disapproval, or a sharp _I told you so_. But no - it was his eyes, his _eyes_ , so full of genuine pain, genuine _concern_. He _loved_ her. He _cared._

It knocked all the wind out of her, so that she found her face crumpling, tears welling unbidden between her closed lashes. The snatch of his hands on her arms, the wash of his warm breath over her face as he studied her-

She sank to her knees.

And suddenly, his shoulder was there, the crook of his neck where her head just seemed to fit. She pressed her face into his shirt, balling the coarse fabric in her hands, inhaling the stale odour of cigarette smoke and aftershave; clung to it like something was going to rip her away.

“What the hell happened? What did you do?” His voice held no anger, just a shrill note of panic.

The Party retreated, Mike’s hands held up in surrender. “Nothing, I swear! She didn’t use her powers.”

Lucas picked up hurriedly. “There’s something in the quarry, something that attacked her.”

El gazed at the cabin curiously. The wooden slats held together by sheer force of will, the scars in the window frames from where Hopper had had to board up the windows. It seemed to be way too close, and yet, at the same time far, far away. She tried to say something, but her lips refused to move; all that escaped was a weakening groan. And the pain was returning – that rumbling, throbbing ache at the base of her skull. Somehow, it made her lungs feel full, almost like she was drowning, trapped in the Bath with no helmet, the shutters closed and the lid screwed shut, screaming for _Papa, Papa, let me go…_

_Help me…_

“El. Hey, you still with me?” Odd, the drifting sensation, the curious echo on the edge of Hopper’s voice. She felt his arms closing around her, one tucking under her back, the other behind her knees. And the warm, mumbling breath against her cheek and the gentle rocking motion as he carried her inside only added to the sick dizziness that grew behind her eyes.

Before she knew it, everything had gone black.

~

 “Right, here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re all gonna go home, go hug your mums, tell ‘em everything’s fine. Pretend like nothing happened” – Hopper’s eyes scorched Mike in particular, who let out a squeak of protest - “Meanwhile, I’m gonna wait till El wakes up, then I’m going out there.”

“What, on your own?” Max scoffed from the corner she had managed to stuff herself in, knees under her chin, nestled between piles of stuff. Books, mostly.

Lucas agreed. “Yeah, bad idea, man,”

They boys were crowded into the only piece of clear floorspace near the sofa where Hopper had laid El. She was out cold, though it hadn’t stop Mike from trying to rouse her, her small hand clasped in his. Dimly, Max wondered whether she’d still have all her fingers by the time he let go.

 “I don’t give a _shit_. You kids are staying out of this. You’ve done enough already.”

Maybe he was more irritable than usual, but it struck Max that it might not be them that Hopper was really angry with. In fact, she was beginning to wonder whether all of this stuff was a dangerous circle, a fairground wheel that just kept spinning, round and round, without a care for who fell off.

Hopper was clinging on by a thread.

“Just trust me. Go home.”

In turning his back, the chief ended the conversation. Mike opened his mouth to protest, but after a moment, he solemnly closed it again. Max watched him, an unease settling in her throat as he struggled to tear himself away from El. Briefly, a childish part of her wondered if Lucas would do the same for her, if she was hurt like that.

The look on his face assured her that he would.

“Need a lift?” Lucas smiled, extending a hand to her, which she gladly took, pulling herself to her feet beside him. Max thought he might let her go, but he didn’t. Over his shoulder, she caught a glimpse of Mike’s face, an unreadable expression clouding his eyes, but it was fleeting, so brief she could have imagined it. A moment later, he turned to leave.

“Mike.” Hopper’s call from the kitchen stilled him instantly. “I’ll get her to call you when she wakes up.”

A half-smile danced across his lips. “Thanks,” he murmured. Then he slipped through the door and was gone.

Max cast a glance into the cabin again as she went to pass the sofa, observing the silhouetted form of Hopper leaning over the empty stove, fingers lost in his scrubby beard.

She almost asked if he was alright.

 

~*~

 

_In the deep. Squirming, turning, crawling. Flashing. Blues and reds, blues and reds, crackling down its body like energy. It pressed into her, long fingers around her throat. Probed, poked, prodded her mind. Scratched at her skull with its teeth until it seeped its way in._

_A beast. A monster._

_Help me._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've made it this far, thank you for reading!   
> Shout out to anyone who's struggling with anything tonight - you're all beautiful people and deserve happiness. 
> 
> WSQ


	4. Chapter 4

The bell sounded the grim death of their lunchbreak, and Mike, Will, Max, Lucas and Dustin scrambled through the crowd, one after another, trying desperately to make it to English before Mrs Grundy totally blew her shit. Which, let’s be honest, she was bound to do anyway. She got such a kick out of handing out detentions.

“I’m telling you guys, if I don’t hear anything by next period, I’m skipping class and going to check on her.”

Normally, Max would’ve told him to quit moaning, but since yesterday, she really hadn’t got the heart. Just the thought of El there in the half-light, without even the strength to keep her eyes open, clearly turned his organs to ice.

Beside her, Lucas pursed his lips, frowning. “That’s a bad call.”

Mike glared over his shoulder. “Oh yeah? And why’s that?”

“’Cos it’s Hopper’s day off, that’s why! What’s he gonna say when you turn up at his house in the middle of school time?”

For once, Mike had no clever come-back, but that didn’t stop him from giving his best, most furious pout and folding his arms across his chest. Sure, Lucas was _right_ , but he didn’t have to be happy about it.

A couple of kids went screaming past, one with a football clasped in his hands, and a third sprinted head-long through the middle of the group, sending Will and Dustin scrambling back out of the way. It was weird, watching them – her friends had been that age themselves when all of this had started.

The crowds were thinning as the hordes of students drained into classrooms and the doors closed behind them. Past the Principle’s office, the locker-lined corridors were opening up, giving Mike the space to break into a run. The others followed suit, and Max sighed. Sure, she’d probably regret it later, but she’d rather be bullied than late.

The clattering of their footsteps echoed off the hard linoleum. Just one more corner to go, and…

Dustin was first to see it.

“Will? Are… are you ok?”

Max turned. A few yards back, Will had halted, and in the sharp, fluorescent light, it was very apparent that he was _not_ okay. Not at all. Pale as marble and soaked in sweat, his wide, flickering eyes were made even wider by the pinched expression on his face.

He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “I… I feel a little weird.”

“A little?” Max couldn’t stop herself. The kid looked like he had typhoid or something.

Before his friends could even move, Will fumbled for the wall, crashing against it and sliding to a heap on the floor.

Dustin gave a cry of fear, grabbing Lucas’s shoulder. “Shit, shit, _shit-”_

Lucas threw him off, howling, “Get the nurse, _get the nurse!_ ” – and the two of them pelted back down the hall and skidded around the corner.

“What is it, Will? What’s wrong?” Mike shouldered past Max to get closer, reaching out to clasp his friend’s arm.

Will looked between him and her. “I… It’s…” He took a moment, swallowed. “It’s probably nothing.”

Max furrowed her brow.

She was inclined not to believe him.

 

~*~

 

Will was standoffish as Mike walked him through the locker-lined corridors to where Jonathan’s car was waiting. It had taken Will’s sheepish admission that he hadn’t eaten all day to keep the school nurse from calling an ambulance – and Mike wasn’t entirely sure that it was true.

“It’s fine. I’ve been feeling weird all day.” 

“Weird, how?”

“Just… weird.”

Mike chewed his lip. “Are you sure it’s nothing?”

Will stopped to look at him, a strange kind of hurt lingering in his eyes. “You sound like my mum.”

Mike kicked himself. No wonder the kid was trying to get away from him. Being babied was the biggest thorn in Will’s side, no matter how good the reasoning. 

“I’m sorry…”

Will paused at the doors, one hand on the handle. “It’s okay. Just… trust me.”

And then, like that, the double doors opened and he was gone.

 

~*~

 

Will breathed deep, steeling himself as his brother leaned across and popped the car door open for him. The sun beat down through the clouds, unbearably, unseasonably hot.

He slipped into the car seat and slammed the door, fastening his seatbelt without looking across to the driver’s side. He’d only be hurt by what he found there – popping eyes and lips trembling with worry. Drawing his knees together, he folded his arms tightly around his chest in a way that felt safe, somehow.

Jonathan didn’t start the engine for a long time, the concern radiating off him and filling the space around them with uncomfortable unease.

“…You wanna talk to me?”

“Not really,” Will replied. Because how was he supposed to talk about this? How could he put it into words? There was no way to say it that would make him understand.

Will had been there one second, and the next, he was… somewhere else.

Somewhere cold. Somewhere dark.

He reached out a hand and wrapped it around Jonathan’s wrist, closing his eyes as the engine roared into life.

~

Will marched straight through the kitchen, making a beeline for his bedroom in the hopes he could slip past his mother before she had a chance to start fussing him. No such luck, however – Joyce was perched on the edge of the couch, waiting for him.

“Will?”

He didn’t stop until he made it to his bedroom, kicking off his shoes, shedding his bag and jumper by the door and plunging into the comfort of his bed. It was a bit pathetic, really, but he wasn’t in the mood – not with his head still spinning and aching and a sick feeling lingering in his chest.

He could hear her moving, knew without a doubt that she was following him, so he turned his back on the door and hoped she might leave him to sleep. The thought of her badgering him all afternoon flared an uncomfortable flicker of annoyance.

When she didn’t come in, however, the annoyance turned to concern. Maybe he _was_ acting up. In fact, if anything, he was probably making it worse, and the thought only made his head ache even worse.

 He couldn’t help it. No matter how old he got, he still found himself wanting his mum.

Her feet scuffed on the carpet outside his room. Will rolled over.

“Mum…?”

The door swung open almost immediately, her concerned face peeking around it. “Hey, sweetie. You ok in here?”

Will turned to face her, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “My head hurts…”

Joyce crooned, hurrying over as though it was just the invitation she was waiting for. Perching like a hen on the edge of his bed, her hand found his forehead, and then brushed its way though his hair.

“Did something happen?”

“I… I don’t know- I mean, yes, something happened, but I… I don’t know what.”

Joyce nodded, her fingers lingering at the back of his neck. “Was it like before? Did you see… did you see that thing?”

Will shook his head. “It was… different somehow. Like it was somewhere else. It was just… dark, and… and cold…”

A shudder ran up his spine, and, despite his best efforts, he could already feel his eyes prickling, no matter how he scrubbed at them with the heel of his hand.

“I… I just… panicked… and they all saw me, mum, they all saw me-”

He screwed his eyes tight shut. Mike already knew – he could see it in his face, the way his eyebrows pinched as he looked at him. They all knew something was wrong. They were all gonna get caught up in it all over again- and it was his fault.

“I thought it was all over!”

Joyce put her arms around him, her soft, thin hand cradling his head against her neck as his shoulders trembled. “It’s okay, baby. It’s alright…”

He remembered their faces, the fear in all of their eyes as he lost his balance, as the world flickered into darkness. The pain that flashed across his mind.

Her face. He remembered her face.

“Mum…”

“I’m here, Will, I’m right here-”

“No, mum… I saw her. I saw Eleven.”

Joyce pulled away suddenly. He didn’t think she could lose any more colour from her face, but her skin turned hollow around her wide, staring eyes. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“I saw her. I think she’s in trouble.”

Whatever she was about to say died on her tongue as a knock rang through the empty house. Will and his mother exchanged equally horrified looks. Nobody knocked at the door in the middle of the day. The salesmen didn’t come this way. His friends just walked in.

Will grabbed Joyce’s hand and squeezed.

He buried his hand in the back of his mum’s shirt as they crept towards the front door, hearts in their mouths, bare feet padding across the carpet. A shape moved across the frosted glass panel of the front door, too small to be an adult – maybe even a person.

Joyce snatched a frying pan from the rack beside the stove.

Shuddering, the bolt unlocked itself, and the chain slid from its housing and clattered against the old wood. The door fell open, gently, slowly.

Joyce stepped back - “Oh my God…” – and the frying pan clattered to the floor. And there, framed in the doorway, Will finally saw her.

For real this time.

The moment she saw Joyce, Eleven’s face crumpled, and the woman barely had time to get over her shock before the girl threw herself into her arms. Wracked by sobs, clothes torn and filthy, she just didn’t seem to care. Because here she was, risking everything, just to see the woman who’d never, ever given up on her.

“Oh, sweetie… Oh, sweetie, it’s okay.” Joyce pressed her lips into El’s hair, the nervous tremor of her voice withholding the question she dreaded asking. “It’s okay, I got you. I got you.”

El took a shaky breath, drinking in the clean smell of washing powder and musky perfume. And cigarette smoke.

“I can’t find him,” She whimpered. Joyce gently drew her inside, far enough to shut the door behind her, and then held her at arm’s length. Somewhere along the way, El had grown almost as tall as she was.

 “Can’t find who, honey?”

Eleven shook her head, her throat closing up on her.

“It’s Hopper. He’s... He’s gone.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting a little more exciting now! I had a lot of trouble with how to start this fic - everything I wanted to say just seemed to take far too long. However, with a lot of reshuffling, I think I might have cracked it... see what you think.
> 
> WSQ


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, there was no sign of Will. The Party sat together at morning break, as they always did, on the steps behind the science block, but nobody had the guts to start a conversation. They’d end up on the same topic again, anyway.

A commotion started behind them. Dustin turned and groaned, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Mike followed his gaze and his heart sank even further. Anything else in the world, and maybe even the other world too, would have been better than seeing that ugly, sneering face.

“What do you want, Troy?”

The bully was grinning like he had some serious dirt in his arsenal, but he knew from experience that Troy wasn’t that smart. Not usually.

“Just thought I’d come check in on the freak show, that’s all.”

Dustin rolled his eyes. “You’re really still doing this?”

“What about it, Toothless? How’s the dentist? Heard you got the hots for the older ladies, anyhow.”

Before Dustin had a chance to reply, Lucas had squared up, toe to toe with the other boy, and at least a head taller. “Back off, Troy. Even you gotta know that four-to-one ain’t good odds for you.”

“You gonna fight me, Midnight? S’pose that’s all thugs like you know how to do.”

The sheer idiocy of everything coming out of his mouth was stunning to everyone. And thank God it was, because it gave Dustin and Max a chance to grab Lucas’s arms before he had time to swing.

Max’s face was frozen in an expression that read, _is this kid for real?_ And for once, Mike actually agreed with her. Problem was, since he wouldn’t go for girls, and the others were taken care of, Mike was left at Troy’s mercy, that shit-eating grin of triumph turning in his direction.

“And what about you, Wheeler? How’s your creepy Russian girlfriend? Honestly, I should call the FBI on you weirdos. I bet you’re holding her hostage in some basement somewhere.”

Mike froze. _You’ve gotta be kidding me._ Somewhere after the arm-breaking episode, Troy had slithered into the background of school life, too much of a coward to face them again. In fact, he’d faded away so perfectly, Mike wasn’t even sure he remembered. But here he was, clear as day, telling him exactly what he feared hearing more than anything in the world.

 _I should call the FBI_.

Troy was laughing at him now, snorting for breath. “What, you don’t want anyone to know? That’s too bad, Mike. I’m gonna tell everyone about your psycho bitch. That’s if she hasn’t realised what a loser you are and left already.”

“And what?” the sound of Max’s voice almost made him jump. “Who are you gonna tell, your friends? You know, the ones you don’t have? Or are you gonna go crying to your mum? _Oh, mummy, mummy, the mean girl was bullying me!_ ”

Mike glanced at Max, saw something in her eyes that frightened him. Something distinctly _Billy_.

It was working, though. The smugness drained from Troy like wet leaves down a drain, replaced by the red-faced fury of someone who’d just had the carpet pulled from under him.

 “And who’s gonna believe you, huh?” Max advanced on him with a smug swagger full of triumph. “Oh, yes, it was definitely the bald Russian girl with superpowers that made you pee yourself in front of the whole school. They’ll really listen to that.”

Troy baulked. “You wait, freakshow. You fucking wait.”

And just like that, he was gone.

Mike bit his lip. For all his stupidity, Troy could really, actually get them in trouble here. It could put El in danger, and there was no way he could allow that. So, while Lucas shrugged off the grip of his friends and declared to Max, _“I’m gonna marry you”_ , Mike glared at the bully’s retreating back.

Dustin must have spotted the look on his face. He closed the distance between them and clapped a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “He’s pretty stupid, but he’s not that stupid. Like Max said – who’s he gonna tell?”

Mike bit his lip. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was – who might hear him telling?

_“That’s if she hasn’t realised what a loser you are and left already”_

He span on his heel, snatched his bag up from the steps, and headed off towards the car park, leaving his friends behind him calling his name.

~

Mike’s journey took him in completely the wrong direction for English. He had no intention of going back anyway. First, El had gone AWOL, and now Will too… it had to be the Upside-Down. There was no other explanation. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

His feet took him past the office windows, through the car park, and towards the High School, where loud music was pumping through the open gymnasium doors. The thumping and squeaking of basketballs and sneakers thundered a wild accompaniment. Mike could almost smell the sweat from here. He shivered, pulling his sweater tighter around him.

Outside the doors, a couple of lads were hanging around, shoving each other and holding a light-hearted conversation that looked for all the world like an argument. Another boy came out of the hall, tapped his teammate on the shoulder, and took his place as he disappeared inside.

It was too late by the time Mike realised he was staring. For all his effort to look away nonchalantly, the basketball boys had spotted him, and they began to bristle like dogs over meat.

“What you lookin’ at, fag?”

“You a fucking queer or what?”

He put his head down, hiking his bag further up his shoulder and turning to head down the road instead, but suddenly, another voice cut through the rest.

“The fuck are you idiots looking at?”

Steve Harrington. The one and only. He rounded the other lads, his hair alone standing him a head taller than his teammates. Mike’s eyes met his over the distance, like radio transmitters, sending a silent message between them.

“You dickbrains call Nancy’s kid brother a fag again and we’re gonna have a problem – clear?”

Without even waiting for an answer, Steve began the long, shirtless swagger across the car park. Mike could smell the sweat on him from here.

“Hey, dickhead. What are you doing here?”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Nothing.”

“Yeah? That’s weird, ‘cos, I coulda sworn it’s a school day.”

“So?”

“So, Nance is gonna kill you if she finds out you’re skipping class.”

Mike snorted. “She’s not gonna find out.”

“No?”

“No. ‘Cos you’re not gonna tell her.”

Steve whipped his shirt out of the back of his shorts, slipping it over his head with practiced ease, somehow avoiding flattening his hair.

“What is it, asshole? Spill.”

Mike bit his lip. Weird as it was, Steve was probably his best shot at getting help. And one of the few people he could actually trust with this kinda stuff.

“It’s Will… Something happened.”

“Oh cool. Great. That’s real vague.”

Mike clenched his fists. “He’s gone home ill and he won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Steve stroked his chin, tension rippling across his shoulders. “So…?” Mike shot him a grave look. “Tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”

He bit his lip.

Steve ran a hand through his hair. “Have you said anything to El?”

Mike’s heart twinged painfully. “That’s the problem… yesterday, she went all weird too. We were just out walking, and El went all blank. And then next minute…”

The older boy didn’t need to hear the rest. In fact, he looked like he was almost afraid to. “Jesus…”

“I need to go find her. I haven’t heard from her since we left her at Hopper’s last night-”

Without a word, Steve grabbed Mike by the shoulder and span him around, frog-marching him across the parking lot to where his polished red Beemer was waiting.

Mike squeaked in protest. “But what about-”

“The team can finish without me – world’s not gonna save itself.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out the fic has been marked 'completed' this whole time... whoops. Sorry for any confusion!  
> Also, that trailer though... it's been a day and a half and I'm still reeling.
> 
> WSQ


	6. Chapter 6

The cluttered cabin was empty. Mike headed straight for El’s bedroom, finding the bed pristine, all her belongings tidied neatly away. His eyes caught on the drawing of Will’s that he’d pinned to the wall, the Supergirl comic book Dustin had leant her that she’d already read three times through. A hollowness settled in his chest.

Steve wondered out of the bathroom, nailbat slung over his shoulder (God alone knows what he thought it was going to be used for) and took in a long sweep of the living room.

“They could just be out walking. Maybe he went after whatever it was in the quarry, and she went with him?”

Mike bit his lip – it was a possibility, at least.

He’d spent the whole drive to Hopper’s cabin trying to explain to Steve exactly what he’d seen. Yesterday had been a day that he’d been dying to forget, but the sight of El’s face, covered in blood and screwed up in agony, kept playing though on repeat. That, and Will’s sudden collapse. The images made his head spin, and he sat heavily on the edge of the sofa, tangling his fingers into his hair.

“Hey, hey. You better not be flaking out on me, Wheeler.” Steve’s voice was strangely soft. Mike felt the cushion sag under the older boy’s weight, heard the nail bat _clank_ into the floorboards.

“I can’t do this again,” he breathed.

Steve leaned back, huffing a breath into his cheeks. “I know.”

“I thought she closed it. I thought the gate was closed.”

“Maybe whatever it was slipped through while it was open?”

Mike bit his lip.

“And what if it _is_ open again? I mean, could she do that?”

Mike rounded on him in an instant. “You think she opened it? Do you even hear yourself? El would never-”

“Okay, okay! Alright! Keep your pants on!” Steve’s hands flew up defensively. “I’m not saying she did it on purpose!”

“She… what?”

“Could she do it by accident? I mean-”

Before Steve was even halfway to finishing, Mike pushed himself up off the sofa, stomping out of the front door and slamming it behind him.

“Hey!” Steve stared after him. “Hey, shithead! Where are you going? _Hey!”_

 

~*~

 

Joyce slammed the phone down, running a hand down her face, lingering as long as she dared before turning back to the worried, expectant face loitering behind her.

“I’m sorry, sweetie…”

She didn’t need to go on. El turned away, trying to hide the ugly, tearful grimace tugging at the corners of her mouth behind a hurried hand. The station had been the last place they could think of to ask, and Flo hadn’t seen Hopper since he left that morning. There was nowhere else to look, and the sore, abrasive reality was beginning to set in.

Hopper really was gone.

Joyce caught sight of Will watching from the couch. He’d been keeping a strange distance, even when she asked him to call Hopper’s radio from his super-comm.

“What about the quarry?” Will suggested quietly. “We could go down in the car…”

“I checked,” El breathed. “He’s not there.”

“C-could he have gone home, maybe?” Joyce was biting her nails, her hand already lingering over the receiver. “I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to check.”

Will and El glanced at one another, that odd spark flashing between them that made them both quickly look away again.

Joyce bit her lip and started dialling.

 

~*~

 

Steve brushed quickly through the kitchen – the dry dishes on the draining board, the empty box of Eggos, the cold coffee pot. He hadn’t been here before – it was strictly El’s friends only, and no exceptions. Not until she was officially released, until she was officially ‘Jane’. Then again, he had only offered to babysit once.

All of a sudden, the air was split by a shrill ringing that made Steve jump out of his skin.

The phone was practically leaping off the hook. For a moment, he considered leaving it. It could be anyone, and what would they think when some high-school kid from Hawkins picked up the receiver? But then again, it could be Hopper at the station.

He could be calling for El.

Steve hurried across the room and snatched up the receiver.

Silence. Then, tentatively, a voice came through that didn’t sound like it expected an answer. “Hello? Hop? Is that you?”

Joyce Byers? Steve frowned. What was Jonathan’s mum doing calling Hopper? “Uh, he can’t come to the phone at the moment-”

“Steve? What the hell are you doing over there?”

“We’re looking for- Uh, we’re looking for _Jane_.” The name felt weird to say – it almost didn’t seem to fit her, except that it did.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

The door slammed open, the kid’s expectant face appearing, eyes bulging. Steve watched him warily, then turned back into the handset. “Uh, yeah, about that – could you maybe not mention this to Mrs Wheeler-”

“Steve, she’s with me. Get over here.”

 

~*~

 

El had been wondering the house for the best part of an hour, restless, unable to sit down. Joyce had offered her water, food, anything to calm her, but she carried on drifting through the rooms the way an animal paces when it’s been inside too long. Even when Jonathan got home from school, when Joyce started on dinner, something continued to bother her.

Joyce turned from the stove to find her lingering in the kitchen, transfixed by one of Will’s drawings that was tacked to the fridge. Her lips were half-parted, seeming to form breathless words as her fingers traced the delicate crayon lines. The older woman sighed.

“El?”

Her head jerked around in a way that Joyce wished it couldn’t – like she’d been caught in an act of vandalism or something. Frightened. Guilty.

Joyce moved slowly towards the table, drawing a chair out and patting its seat. “El, sweetheart, come talk to me.”

The girl faltered, like she was considering escape as a viable option, but eventually, she relented and took the place offered to her. Joyce waisted no time in placing her hitherto untouched glass of water down in front of her.

El watched her hawkishly as she slipped into the chair beside her, then took the glass to her lips and drained it the way Joyce remembered her high school friends throwing down whiskey. And the kick it gave her to watch the girl finally take something made her just as giddy as the alcohol used to.

“I know everything’s real scary right now, and maybe you don’t wanna talk about it, but to help you, I need to know what happened.” She watched El’s reaction carefully, the way her shoulders miserably hunched, expression drawn. She measured her words carefully. “Something really bad happened, didn’t it?”

El pursed her lips, then slowly nodded.

“Okay. Alright. Now I’m gonna tell you something you might not like.”

A crease appeared between El’s brows, flickering through. Curiosity.

“Hopper called me last night. He told me something happened to you, that you saw something. And it hurt you.”

El’s eyes bored into Joyce’s, but she held her gaze. Slowly, the girl began to nod.

“And whatever it was, did it hurt him, too?”

“…yes.”

A cold claw of fear plunged itself into her heart, but elsewhere in her chest, a spark of anger began to quietly smoulder. These two beautiful people, who she loved with all her heart, they didn’t deserve this. None of it.

El must have seen the tears in her eyes, must have thought she was the problem. She went to get up, but Joyce put a hand over her arm before she had a chance.

“We’re gonna find him, me and you. We’ll search everywhere. What do you say? Wanna tear the world apart with me?”

El released a huff of surprise that moulded and morphed into a small smile. “Yes.”

Joyce was about to throw her arms around her, to hold her tight, until there came a knock at the door that drew both their attentions away. A second later, it sprang open, and into the house stepped Steve, nailbat in hand. He gave a lazy grin as soon as he spotted the two of them in the kitchen.

At his hip, Mike appeared, and Joyce would never get tired of the look in his eyes every time he spotted Eleven, nor the look in her eyes when she saw him. Like a polished piece of choreography, she sprang out of her chair and ran into his arms.

Mike squeezed her tight. “El…”

Steve made a face, but it went pointedly ignored.

“I was so worried,” Mike was gabbling. “First you, then Will…”

El frowned. “Will…?”

Mike studied her face, following her gaze as she looked towards the sofa, where Will was sat. Joyce cringed as her youngest pressed himself harder into the cushions, like he could just melt through them and disappear.

Joyce baulked. It was stupid. They’d all been stupid. Her, and Mike, and all of them, because they’d just completely forgotten to say anything.

And it was painful to watch, as Eleven’s eyes flickered, filling with pain and fear as she finally understood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm running out of buffer already, which may mean updates have to slow down, but please be patient! I'm doing my best.
> 
> WSQ


	7. Chapter 7

As soon as his mother turned the other way, Troy slipped the top sheet of his homework off the kitchen table and straight into the dog’s water bowl.

“Aw, shit!” he mock-scrambled out of his chair and made a hash of trying to rescue it.

His mum didn’t even turn around, too busy with a bottle of wine. “Language, Troy,” she muttered. Like she cared. With another quick glance over his shoulder, he balled the paper and sent a well-aimed package flying in a graceful arc, through the kitchen door, into the living room, and straight into Taffy’s mouth. The bulldog began to chew, delighted.

The light of the television set cast strange shadows on the living room wall behind the dog, and the house was filled with the static burble of the evening cartoons. There came a comical crash which set off his little sister, clapping and giggling. Across the kitchen, he was sure he caught his mother smiling.

Troy was just about to take his place at the table again when his mum finally drifted over and cast her eyes over the sea of equations. “Ooh, long division. You need any help with this?”

It was a pretty arbitrary question; one she’d only started asking when he first said no.

“I got it.”

“Alright.” She was just about to turn away, taking her wineglass with her, when something in his workbook caught her eyes. “What’s all this, honey?”

His ears turned red. “Nothing.”

“Did you draw that in class?”

A dark scribble stood out in the middle of his maths book. A girl, staring out with haunting eyes from underneath a hood, trapped behind the grid-lines like an electric fence. It wasn’t unusual for him to draw girls all over things, but this one had much more clothing and much less flesh.

“Y-Yeah. I mean, the class was boring-“

“It’s beautiful, honey, but you really should be listening.”

“I know, mum.”

She landed a peck on his forehead, and then headed to the living room, where Delilah was just beginning to sing along with the tv.

Troy glanced at his drawing. “Mum?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“When’s Dad gonna be home?”

 

~*~

 

El gazed up at Joyce as the older woman tucked the blankets in tightly around her. The couch was her makeshift bed for the night, and though her legs didn’t quite fit on the other end, she was willing to accept the discomfort for now. Anything was better than spending a cold night alone in Hopper’s cabin.

“You sure you’re okay out here?” Joyce crooned gently. When El nodded, she smiled, and leaned down to give her a gentle kiss on the forehead. “Alright. You need anything at all, you know where my room is, okay?”

“Okay,” El replied.

Joyce took one last, lingering look at her, then rose and drifted towards her room, flicking off the light as she did. Only the little table lamp in the hallway remained on, maintaining a soft, warm glow that somehow made the unfamiliar room seem so much more familiar.

El stared at the ceiling. She didn’t want to move – if she did, Joyce’s tucking would come undone, and there was something soothing about the lingering feeling of the woman’s hands on her shoulders that she didn’t want to lose. Still, the hollow feeling of something missing lingered at her sternum and clawed her back from slumber.

She wished Mike could’ve stayed. They’d spent all of dinner glancing at each other across the table as the group ate in silence. Then, Joyce made them promise to come back tomorrow morning, as early as possible, and to bring the rest of the Party with them. They were going out there, together, and they were _going_ to find him.

It took El several attempts to finally fall asleep, each one thwarted as a half-dream of Hopper’s face drifted across her mind, calling out to her, jerking her awake. When the blackness finally claimed her, it was restless and oppressive, pressing in around her until she barely knew what was sleep and what wasn’t.

_She dreamed of that day, at the quarry. Mike was drifting around her, whistling, laughing, talking, and she watched him move, tried not to turn back into that dark water, knowing what she’d find there. She just wanted to watch him forever._

_But the creature called her, and she was powerless to resist as the colours began to drain, and her chest filled with a cloying, clinging dread that oozed like the walls of the Upside-Down. Her vision flickered – she couldn’t place the exact moment her eyes closed, only the drifting feeling of being at once in the real world and the Inbetween._

_El gasped at the sudden cold, the dark, the water draining through the canvas of her trainers. The quarry walls rose around her, the reflection below them making them seem twice as high. And there, in the centre of them, a shape writhed and coiled._

_In the deep. Squirming, turning, crawling. Flashing. Blues and reds, blues and reds, crackling down its body like energy. It pressed into her, long fingers around her throat. Probed, poked, prodded her mind. Scratched at her skull with its teeth until it seeped its way in._

_A beast. A monster._

_Help me._

_She cried out, but there was nothing, no-one. Only the formless monster to answer her call. But as she watched, the lights of its body faded into nothing._

_She knew what was coming next._

_Two shapes rose through the water, breaking the surface and drifting up and up. Bodies. Limp. Drenched. Unmoving._

_Eleven screamed. She screamed, and screamed, because they weren’t just bodies, they were people. People she knew, people she loved. She slammed her hands over her eyes, trying to forget their twisted, lifeless faces, their grey skin and staring eyes. The camouflage bandana. The mop of mousey brown hair._

_A sudden flash of pain floored her, familiar but different. She’d felt it before but...not here. Not now. Like her body clenched, snatched by something. Slammed hard against something else – another plane, another mind-_

_El only jerked upright when the freezing water had soaked through her clothes, sending shivers down her spine. She was… on the floor? And her vision was filled with two pale, bare feet…_

_As she groggily lifted her head, the knees attached to the feet crashed into the water before her, and frantic hands began to fumble across her shoulders, trying desperately to haul her upright. El narrowed her eyes, forcing them to focus, glaring into the blurred face as it slowly cleared…_

_“…Will?”_

_Eyes wide and cheeks hollow beneath his messy hair, the boy looked just as shocked and confused as she felt._

_His hands tightened on the thin material of her shirt – the shirt that Joyce had leant her to sleep in._

_It was now._

_He could touch her._

_And she could feel him._

With an almighty gasp, Eleven jolted upright hard enough that she fell right off the sofa, landing in a tangle of blankets and limbs.

_She could feel him._

Tearing herself free, El scrambled to her feet, her chest aching and heaving like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the world to sate her. Her sweat was cold and clammy, sticking the thin shirt to her body as she staggered down the Byer’s hallway, heading for the back bedroom.

Will’s room.

The door flew open-

And El stared. Just stared.

_No._

_That wasn’t right._

There he was, tucked up in bed, his back to her-

_Sleeping._

She stood and stared for a long time. Longer than she really should have. Her eyes scanned him over and over, searching desperately for any sign, any twitch, that would tell her that he was awake. That he’d felt it too.

But there was nothing, and eventually, El had to give up. She reached out a shaky hand, swept the door closed again, turned away.

_It… it can’t have been a dream._

She pressed her hands into the sides of her head. The racing of her heart was beginning to hurt.

_It can’t have been a dream._

A chord wrapped its way around her chest and tightened, squeezing all the air out in one go.

_It can’t._

Her knees wobbled dangerously, and El had no choice but to fall back against the wall, to slide to the bottom and curl into herself, to let the horrid, ugly sobbing overtake her. Her fingers tangled into her hair, pulling hard, holding her in place until she could breathe again.

_I thought… I thought…_

She didn’t know what she’d thought. Maybe, for a fleeting second, she’d wished for someone beside her.

She’d imagined, for once, that she wasn’t alone.

~

It didn’t matter how far Will shoved his head beneath his pillow – he couldn’t shut out the terrible sounds of crying in the hallway.

His own tears meant nothing, and neither did hers, because even as his heart ached for her, he knew.

He knew he couldn’t tell her.

Because what would she think of him then?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, it's getting heavy...   
> I just wrote this all out pretty much all in one go tonight, and my buffer is now totally gone, so who knows whether I'll be able to upload tomorrow -but I'll try!
> 
> WSQ


	8. Chapter 8

That was where Joyce found her – in the hallway, curled up so small she could almost have passed her by, if not for the sorrowful sound of her sniffling. She was cautious on her approach – God knew how powerful El was when she was upset.

And _God_ , did she look upset.

“Hey, honey…” Joyce kept her voice as low as she could, slowly and carefully taking a knee beside the young teenager. She dreaded to learn where El had learnt to cry so silently, those great, ugly, shoulder-jarring sobs that came out barely louder than a whisper.

At first, El ignored her, and Joyce couldn’t be sure whether it was on purpose or not. And she didn’t dare touch her – the older woman knew exactly how much she would have hated that herself. Instead, she got down on her knees and leaned forward, trying to find El’s face in all the tightly curled limbs.

“Sweetie? You in there?”

For a second, El went eerily still. Then, slowly, tentatively, she turned her head, just enough that one bright, shining eye could peek out at the intruder.

“It’s only me, El. You’re safe. You’re home with us, and you’re safe.”

Joyce felt the words flow out without quite asking for them. She didn’t dare assume that El knew what was happening, where she was – it could’ve been anything that had her out here, crying in the middle of the night. PTSD, panic attack, nightmares – anything.

El looked her up and down warily.

“Everything’s okay, El,” Joyce murmured, trying to set her lips in a safe, comfortable smile.

Slowly, terribly, the girl shook her head.

“No…”

Joyce’s smile died. “…What happened, sweetheart?”

El didn’t reply, putting her head back down between her knees as a fresh bout of tears threatened. Joyce pursed her lips for a moment, then shuffled across the hallway until she’d taken up position opposite the girl, her back to the other wall and feet folded neatly beneath her.

“Ok. You know what? You don’t have to tell me about it.”

The girl looked up again, measuring her expression, trying to tell whether she was about to be guilted into reliving her experience or not. Joyce narrowed her eyes, then tilted her chin up with a lopsided smile.

“How about I make some cocoa instead?”

El just looked exhausted. Joyce really felt for her – she knew what it was like when you couldn’t sleep. She reached out and gently brushed her hand over the back of the girl’s messy hair, then rose and headed to the kitchen.

As quietly as possible, she fired up the stove, grabbed a pot from the rack, filled it with milk – the old routine.

“You know, this used to be the only way I could get Jonathan to sleep.” Joyce didn’t need to turn around to know El was there behind her.

As she moved through the familiar motions, the teen was almost glued to her hip. Wherever she moved in the kitchen, it didn’t seem to matter – El stayed within touching distance. But whenever Joyce turned to look, her eyes were firmly fixed on her feet.

_Warm the milk until almost boiling. Add powder. Don’t forget to stir._

It wasn’t long until they were on the sofa, side by side, gazing into their swirling, sickly-sweet cups. At least this time, when Joyce glanced over, El looked her in the eye.

“I’m… scared.”

“You are?”

“Uh-huh.”

“…Why?”

Joyce patiently waited for her answer, giving her the time she needed to put together what she knew she had to say.

“When I- when we lost him… I saw it. I followed him.”

“To the quarry?”

“Yes… and no. He told me to stay in the cabin, and I did, but… I followed him.”

“Like how you found Will?”

_Her water-soaked socks were turning her feet numb, and shivers were forcing their way up her spine, but Eleven carried on into the darkness, because doing something, anything, was better than being shut up in that cabin, watching tv and doing nothing._

_It was cold._

_Dark._

_“_ Yes.”

Joyce bit her lip. “Did you… see what happened?”

“…Yes.”

~

_“Hopper!” she called into the void. The echoes that raced around her made her wince – her mind was still decidedly sensitive, because that creature, that thing, was nothing if it wasn’t rough. Her heart skipped a beat. She knew it was out here somewhere too. A frightened part of her hoped that Hopper would never find it. And neither would she._

_She’d spent the last hour pacing, her breakfast resting heavily in her gut, stressing and worrying until her stomach was sore. She’d peeked through the windows, even let herself out onto the porch and done a couple of laps of the cabin, but nothing alleviated that sickening anxiety that was clinging on to her chest._

_Only her loyalty to him had stopped her from following._

_That, and the anger that kept biting at the back of her mind._ Let him go out there and get hurt, see if I care _. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t want to see him come home grovelling, saying ‘you were right, you were right’… except she had that dreadful feeling that if he found it, he wouldn’t be coming home at all._

_It was only when she’d been channel surfing between kids cartoons and daytime movies that she kicked herself. Of course. Stupid. It had only taken a moment for her to retrieve the old scarf from behind her bedroom door, to flick the tv onto static, to fold the scarf behind her head and plunge through the haze and into the darkness._

_Dark._

_Cold._

_She shivered, the muscles in her stomach twisting painfully. Her strength was running out way faster than it should have been, too – an ache spreading between her eyes, daring her to go back, to give up._

_Why couldn’t she find him?_

_Eleven stopped, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She wouldn’t find him through panicking, that was for sure. Instead, she drew an image of him from her memory, tried to trace it with her mind – the most vivid, the most happy._

She was leaning against a rag-tag bunch of wooden planks that were somehow fashioned into a bookshelf, her feet stinging from days of walking through the snow. The cold had left her with a permanent shiver, her stomach an empty void of nothingness, her ears constantly numb. And there, across the room, was Hopper, flipping through a box of wide, square sleeves.

“Oh, yeah… yeah,” he was murmuring

He drew one out, his grin taking years off his face. “This-” he tapped his fingers on the white sleeve “-This is music.”

The sleeve read _You Don’t Mess Around with Jim_ , and Hopper slipped the vinyl from its case and gently placed it on the deck behind him, lifting the needle and touching it to the record.

The sudden noise made her start, eyes searching his face for any breath of danger. But no, instead, he beamed a goofy smile, snapping his fingers to the music and strangely shaking his hips in movements El had never seen before. And when she asked, he called it ‘dancing’.

_El felt a smile tugging at her lips. She called to mind every wrinkle, every hair that clung to his chin. She could almost see it._

_No. She could see it._

_Hopper was walking towards her through the water, one hand on his gun holster, the other lifted, brushing the foliage out of his face. El stood her ground until he was almost upon her, then sidestepped out of his way, watching him as she turned and found-_

_No._

_The quarry walls rose around her like a prison, like concrete trapping her in, and the water soaking through her shoes was so, so cold…_

_“Hopper!” It was useless yelling to him through the void, but she felt compelled to anyway._

_The images flickered, the walls beginning to drift like smoke. A sharp pain dashed across her temple, making her gasp. A buzz ran through her muscles, like she was being electrocuted – tugging her body into shapes she wished she couldn’t make – and the next moment, she was on the ground._

_A little group made their way through the busy school corridors, slipping between crowds. The bell was ringing. Friends. Her friends. El looked up as they broke into a run, passing her – Mike to her left, Lucas to the right-_

_She caught Will’s eye._

She caught Will’s eye.

_It wasn’t them he was looking at. It wasn’t their friends. It was her._

_And then, he was gone._

_Footsteps. El jolted upright, heaving for breath, hunting through the darkness for the source of the sound. Her heart quickened. She didn’t have time for dreams – Hopper was out there – in danger-_

_Behind her, the quarry was solidifying again, stretching around her as she staggered to her feet. There was a deep rumbling beneath her that set the water alight with little wavelets. And there, Hopper was leaning down towards the lake._

_Eleven froze._

_In the darkness, something moved. Flashed. Writhed._

_Hopper howled, ducking away, pulling out his gun and letting off a shot, then another, then another. Whatever it was had his face contorted into such horror that he could barely move, right up until the point that he started running._

_El sprinted towards him, the cold water splashing up her body. She shrieked his name, cried out until her lungs burned, hoping, praying that she could get to him in time._

_Because it was coming for him. Twisting, writhing, moaning. Long, slender arms reaching. Teeth snapping. So many teeth._

_“Hopper!”_

_A few more yards._

_Just a few more steps._

_She almost had him._

_Eleven threw her arms open, dived for him-_

_And grabbed onto smoke._

~

El’s mug of cocoa hit the floor with a dull thud. Fingers tangled in her hair, the girl pitched forward, moaning, and for a second, Joyce was afraid she might vomit. But no; as if she hadn’t done so enough tonight, she began to cry again, and this time, Joyce had no choice but to lean across the couch and pull her into a tight hug.

“El, sweetie, you’re alright. You’re ok.”

The girl’s arms snaked their way around Joyce’s waist, twisting her nightshirt into her fists.

“Remember where you are, honey. You’re safe. You’re with me.”

Joyce held El there until her breathing eased, until the tears dried and her shoulders relaxed and she began to sag towards sleep. And even then, the older woman only leaned back into the couch cushions, letting her cheek rest against the top of the girl’s head as both she and El drifted comfortably back into the blackness. Together.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thanks for sticking with me - I hope it's worth it for you!   
> I'm afraid I'm going to have to chill out with my schedual over the next few weeks, until I've got my dissertation written and handed in. Keep an eye out, but it won't be uploaded every day anymore. I'm sorry, and thanks for your understanding.
> 
> WSQ


	9. Chapter 9

The Byer’s house was packed with people, all gathering around the couch, where Mike was gently placing a blindfold over El’s eyes. Not that she couldn’t do so herself, but, for whatever reason, this morning, she refused to be more than a few feet from her boyfriend.

Max squeezed Lucas’s hand tightly, basking in his warmth as he squeezed her back. Behind them, Jonathan was clinging to Nancy, who in turn was clutching Steve’s jacket sleeve. Dustin was perched at El’s feet, and Will was lingering near Joyce, who was leaning over the television set, waiting for Mike’s signal.

Mike himself was kneeling on the sofa cushions, a hand on each of El’s shoulders. He murmured something inaudible, and El sightlessly nodded.

Turning to Joyce, Mike breathed, “Now.”

Mrs. Byers switched the TV onto static, and everyone held their breath.

It was so eerie, to be with so many people and yet so still. To cast her gaze across the sea of nervous faces. To watch the blood lethargically dribble down from El’s nose. Max found herself wishing she’d sat on a chair or something. Her foot was going to sleep.

El was silent for a long time; just the very slightest of movements as her neck tried to follow what she could only imagine was the swinging of her eyeballs beneath their lids. The air was thick with malice – Max could hardly breath.

Then, quite suddenly, El shuddered. The sight made the room turn frigid, and Lucas’s grip on her hand tightened. Max felt it too – that weird, second-hand embarrassment. It took guts, to make yourself so vulnerable in front of so many people you loved.

Even Mike’s quick hand on her arm didn’t seem to calm her – as they watched, El’s breath grew shallow, and her skin prickled with the beginnings of sweat. Icy sweat. Max could only imagine what she could be seeing.

Without warning, El’s hand shot up, tearing the blindfold off and depositing it swiftly in Mike’s lap.

He leaned towards her. “El, you okay?”

Max craned forward to hear her speak.

“He’s not there. I can’t find him.” The heavy monotone of her voice was like a spear in the chest. Max felt Lucas put an arm around her shoulders, more for his own comfort than hers, and around them, the faces grew stormy and frightened.

El cleared her throat, and fixed her eyes, not on Mike, but on… Joyce?

“But I found the monster.”

~

It took two cars to ferry them all down to the old quarry road, and they left them on the side of Kerley, continuing through the forest on foot. Oddly enough, once there, it was Mrs Byers who took the lead, an old axe from the shed clasped in a white-knuckled grip. Max admired her – the woman looked just about ready to take the thing out on her own.

Jonathan was close behind his mother, Nancy by his shoulder. Max herself stayed fixed beside Lucas and Will in their little group, and Steve brought up the rear (probably, she thought, so he had the space to swing his nail-bat around like some wild-west gunslinger. If wild-west gunslingers were idiots and carried bats to gunfights).

Mike pointed the way when they got to the path, El almost permanently attached to his arm, and soon they were gathering at the water’s edge, staring up at the faceless walls. It was probably just the water, or the heavy grey cloud, but… it felt cold here. And the fact that El had gone all tense and quiet really didn’t help.

“Alright then, team,” Steve broke the silence, scanning the litter-strewn foreshore. “Let’s look for clues.”

“Okay, Scooby-Doo,” Max muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Actually, usually, it was Fred who had that line,” Dustin was quick to point out.

“Nobody cares, dufus.”

“I do.”

There wasn’t one person who hadn’t immediately spread out across the loose, stony ground, scouring the course gravel for something, anything that could offer some answer. Not that they needed one. Not really.

As Max was kicking through the gravel, something glimmered in the dirt - sharper, brighter than the flecks of quartz hidden in the granite. She immediately lunged for it, digging it out of the ground with a handful of dirt that she swiftly poked aside to get to her prize.

“Holy shit…”

The whole party came to a shuddering halt at her words, and every eye turned to her. Max pinched it between her fingers, lifted it up towards the light.

Glimmering, tantalising: A brass bullet casing, fresh enough that it still smelt of sulpher. And not just any casing, but one just big enough to fit into a police-issue handgun.

It had to be his.

El was nearest to her, the first to creep close enough to take the casing from Max’s hand. As the other girl held it out, her pinched expression confirmed it. Max tried to catch her eye as her gaze found the ground.

“El, I’m… I’m sorry.”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “He’s not dead.”

“No, I… I didn’t say that.”

El turned away before Max had a chance to continue, staring again into the inky waters of the lake, like if she glared at it long enough, it might rear up and tell her where her dad was.

“I hate to be _that guy_ , but I don’t think he’s here.” Lucas was dancing past Will along the edge of the water, his white trainers tapping through the wavelets.

Mike was quick to snap back at him, spinning to glare at him from his search site under the trees. “How would you know? You’re not even helping!”

“I am too!”

“Yeah?” Mike bristled, and Max had a dreadful feeling she knew what might be coming. “And exactly what have you found?”

Lucas was about to stammer something stupid in response when something on the ground made him freeze. Immediately, the boy crouched, tracing the line of something in the lake shore.

“Does this footprint count?”

The whole crowd of them headed towards him, rushing so fast he almost had to step back into the water.

Joyce licked her lips uneasily. “That’s his boot print, right?”

All eyes turned to El as she nodded sagely.

The group began to disperse again, stroking chins, biting lips, folding arms. Max caught Lucas’s eye, and realised with a certain horror the smug look smouldering on his brow. She tried to catch his eye, to mouth at him _‘don’t do it’_ , but he was too far gone.

“Guess I found one more thing than you, Mike.”

It was such a bad move, Max didn’t even want to look at him.

Mike turned, shoulders hunching dangerously. “Oh, yeah, why don’t you rub it in, Mr Perfect?”

Lucas’s eyes widened. “Mr. _what_?”

Mike rounded on him, spitting his words. “You heard me! Oh, look at me! Lucas Sinclair! I’m the best at everything! I can save the world and hold down a girlfriend and still keep my perfect report card.”

The silence lingered heavily.

And, _oh my God,_ did it make sense. Max could’ve kicked herself. The skipped classes, the late homework – and last week, they’d had a report card sent home that everyone else was more than happy to show off. But Mike? Mike had shoved it deep into his bag and ‘forgotten’ about it.

Graffiti in the bathroom stalls. Mouthing off at teachers. Plagiarising essays.

“Holy shit, Wheeler,” Steve piped up. “Are you jealous?”

“No!” The boy bit back. “You know what? Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

But nobody was about to forget that, least of all Lucas, who had a contemplative look on his face that was usually reserved for some of Mr Clarke’s more difficult homework equations. In fact, he looked as though he was just about to say something – probably would have done, too - when all of a sudden, Will gave a sharp gasp.

Max’s gaze whipped towards him as he slowly, slowly turned towards the water. A shaking hand rose from his hip and ran trembling fingers across his neck.

“Do you feel that?” He breathed.

His brother was right behind him in an instant. “What is it, Will?”

“It’s… It’s like…”

“Cold.” El murmured, her hand finding the loose fabric of Mrs Byer’s shirt sleeve. She and Will shared a look filled with dread, and he slowly nodded.

Max felt her heart plunge into her stomach. She could’ve convinced herself. She really could. It wasn’t like Hopper could get lost in Hawkins, but there could be any number of other reasons… right?

However, as the quiet lapping of the wavelets on the shore turned to a thrashing of sudden breakers, she knew in her heart that she was right to listen all along.

 

~*~

 

_Two shapes rose through the water, breaking the surface and drifting up and up. Bodies. Limp. Drenched. Unmoving._

The cold grip of dread twisted El’s stomach into a painful knot – tight, like she was going to throw up. She knew what was coming. She’d seen it before.

“No… No…”

A firm hand clutched her bicep, and Mike pulled himself towards her, his concern for her far outweighing the fear that should have been filling him up.

“What is it, El?”

She stared back into his face, unable to stop the pooling of tears on her lashes. Then she looked out at them.

Lucas and Will, frozen at the water’s edge, staring into the churning, the cold, dark deep.

“Get away from the water!”

Mike’s cry was in vain. It meant nothing that the two boys turned and ran – nothing was faster than the long, pale arms that shattered the water’s surface, reaching, groping for the helpless human forms.

They were too late to avoid the grasping, slender fingers that wrapped their bodies. Too late to fight as they were lifted into the air, as the arms tore them straight down into the black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, waddup, it's ya boi.   
> Sorry this chapter took so long, and that it took so long to reply to the lovely comments from the last chapter. There's a variety of reasons - Masters dissertation work, film set work, and the most obvious - Season 3.
> 
> All I'm gonna say is, Ouch. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me!
> 
> WSQ


	10. Chapter 10

El could barely hear the cries as she watched the bubbles dissipate on the lake’s surface. Not Joyce and Jonathan howling for ‘ _Will!’,_ nor Max and Dustin’s plaintive shrieks of _‘Lucas!’_. In fact, she found to her surprise that she could hear very little but a sort of strange, hypnotic ringing. And there was a softness creeping into the corners of her vision, a curious feathered edge.

Like a breeze, she felt Max go speeding past her shoulder, joining Jonathan in wading out into the water, scouring fruitlessly beneath the surface. She knew they were gone. If they weren’t, perhaps she would still be able to breathe.

Her knees gave. El could only blink her slow surprise to find herself closer to the ground – she barely felt the thud of bare skin on gravel, nor the tight wrap of Mike’s arms around her shoulders, holding her close, his voice in her ear crying words she couldn’t hear.

Because above her, the sky was turning black, and that writhing, formless shape was slowly untangling, dancing to the rhythm of it’s body’s pulsing flashes.

What brought her back was the bursting, sharp pain that sparked across her temple like electricity, that wrapped a thorny crown around her brain and squeezed until she screamed.

_Warm blood streamed from her nose. Groggily, El opened her eyes, expecting to see the rough gravel, to breath in the damp, sour quarry air. But she couldn’t breath at all. And all around her was freezing blackness, pressing in from all sides. Underwater._

_And there before her, twisting, writhing, fighting the pale, grasping fingers-_

_“Will!”_

_As she wailed his name, his fighting ceased. The boy stopped, listened, hanging in the darkness: glimmering; colourless; touched by the weak rays from the sun above the surface. His eyes found hers, and the pain ceased._

_Will’s lips pulled back in a painful grimace, fighting the urge to inhale. His eyes wailed, ‘help me’, a hand groping towards her. El reached out._

_Their fingers touched._

_Just a little further. She leaned towards him, made a grab that missed him by an inch. The muscles in his throat twisted, begging for the breath he was fighting against, but his eyes were flickering, head struggling to stay up. There was no more time._

_El swiped again. His fingers found her palm, and she locked hers around his wrist._

_Water rushed into his lungs._

_But she knew where he was._

El jerked out of the Inbetween, wheezing and coughing. Pitching forward, she scanned the scene frantically – Joyce fighting the grip of Nancy and Steve, Dustin helpless with his hands in his hair, Max only feet behind Jonathan, both already waist height in the water.

Mike’s hands clamped her shoulders. “El! What is it? Are you ok?”

Gently, she reached up and released his desperate fingers. Pushed herself upright, wiped the blood from her nose with her sleeve.

Walked straight for the water.

Joyce’s cries halted. Dustin’s arms fell to his sides. All eyes turned to her as she deliberately stepped, pace by pace, one foot in front of the other. Max turned, snatched Jonathan’s sleeve before he could dive into the lake.

El fixed her eyes on a rock that rose from the surface not far from the shore. Just tall and just wide enough to make a perfect platform.  The freezing water barely bothered her as she waded deeper, as it rose above her knees, over her hips, up to her chest. Clambering onto that boulder was the only thing on her mind.

From there, she could see everything.

As El towered above the surface, she let her eyes slide closed, just for a moment, just long enough to feel him. Then, she gathered her strength, letting her power pool in the depths of her chest, before drawing it out along her arms and up her neck. Her body shuddered. She reached out.

Silence.

Then, without warning, a body burst from the depths, flying up into the air with a triumphant spray.

Joyce howled.

El smiled.

Dangling in the air, Will opened his mouth to scream, and nothing came out but a gush of sickly water. Choking and urging, his wild eyes settled on El’s expectant gaze, and he heaved for enough breath to call to her.

“Down, to the left! Down, to the left!”

El nodded hurriedly, keeping him up with one hand while the other scoured the depths, _down, to the left_. She reached further. He had to be down there. She could almost feel their anxious gazes boring into her back. They were relying on her.

And so was Lucas.

The effort was making her arms shake. El shook her head, looking desperately at Will.

“I can’t find him!”

Will met her gaze, and for a moment, it was almost as though his eyes went dark. El frowned.

_What is he-_

And, all of a sudden, she could feel him. Lucas. Down in the dark, she plunged her power, reaching, groping. Grabbing. She squeezed the fragile, crushing fingers until they snapped.

Lucas burst out of the water, hanging beside Will.

Limp.

 

~*~

 

“Lucas!” Max couldn’t help herself – the scream was released from her chest before she could stop it. She pulled back from the water as El swung around, bringing the exhausted figures of her friends around in a dripping arc, lowering them towards the foreshore. Will, he seemed ok. A bit dazed, maybe, and cold, and his throat was hoarse. But Lucas-

Lucas wasn’t moving.

Jonathan managed to catch his brother as El’s power gave out, but Max had no such luck – it was all she could do to grab her boyfriend’s head as he crashed to the ground.

She pressed her hands into his soaking shirt, shaking him roughly, begging for a response.

“Please, Lucas. Please, wake up…”

Steve and Mike were beside her in a moment, Nancy and Joyce rushing to help Jonathan and Will. Max looked between their tense faces, biting back the tears that were threatening. Crying wasn’t going to help now. She could do that later.

“Holy shit… Anyone know CPR?” Steve breathed.

 _Of course._ Max looked down at Lucas, then drew herself up and pressed her hands into his chest. _It couldn’t be that hard, could it?_

Mike caught her eye, and for once, she didn’t hate him for it. His gaze was filled with fear, and anxiety, and above all, absolute trust. She pressed her lips together, steeled herself, and pushed down, hard.

Of course, it felt like an eternity, as she forced the heel of her hand down into Lucas’s ribs over and over. But, when he suddenly reared up, spraying fluid from his mouth, she almost forgot the whole ordeal. Her tears finally poured forth as Mike and Steve rolled Lucas onto his side, held him there as he heaved and coughed and retched every drop of lake water from his lungs.

Max fell back into her heels and lifted her face to the sky. _I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this saving the world thing._

 

~*~

 

Dustin watched, drunk and giggling with the relief as Jonathan lifted Will to his feet and Lucas muttered a rough, “Holy shit…” El’s picture may as well have been in the dictionary by now, under the entry for _loyal._ Or maybe _dependable._ Never once had she let them down, never once would she let them die.

He turned his favourite grin to her, hands on his head in a breathless celebration. “You did it! Holy shit, you did it!”

Still perched on her boulder, face streaked with blood, she returned a tired half-smile of her own.

It didn’t last, though. A darkness flickered across her brow, drawing deep creases in the skin of her forehead.

Dustin’s smile was extinguished in an instant. “El…?”

Around him, his friend’s heads jerked around just in time to watch the girl who’d saved their lives sway, lightheaded, and pitch off her rock and into the water.

“ _El!_ ”

For once, it was all up to Dustin.

He took off at a frantic pace, making short work of the distance between himself and the water’s edge, ignoring the chill creeping up his legs, over his socks, his knees, his crotch. The worst thing was the drag – no matter how high he lifted his feet, once it was over his hips, he could barely move against it.

El’s hand shot out of the water, groping blindly for purchase against the rock, and, abandoning all thought of staying dry, Dustin launched himself bodily towards her, blindly finding her thin form beneath the surface, wrapping his arms under hers and pulling her upright.

“El! Can you hear me? Are you alright?”

The girl clung to him, her fingers locking tightly around his arms and feet tentatively searching out the ground beneath their feet. Up close, she was looking worse than ever – her skin pale, and a certain pain lingering in her eyes.

“I’m… okay. I’m okay,” she finally breathed.

Dustin was about to reply when he felt an alien sort of rumbling beneath his feet. And, of course, he made the fatal mistake of looking down. Only then did he realise how close his toes were to the submerged face, the endless drop that would’ve been invisible, if it weren’t for the lights.

Flashing. Blues and reds, blues and reds.

 “Holy shit.”

El whimpered as she saw it too, leaning against him and trying to push him back. Whatever it was, it wasn’t happy, and neither was she.

“Holy _shit_.” Slinging her arm over his shoulder, Dustin made a run for it, half-dragging his friend with him. They staggered back onto the foreshore, the water running from their bodies and forming clumps in the dusty gravel.

“Guys, we gotta-”

Dustin baulked. They were staring at him. All of them.

No, wait - not _at_ him. _Past_ him.

“Oh, Jesus…”

_THUMP._

A huge hand hit the ground to their left. Crippled, broken and bent. Claws digging into the dirt, gripping, _hauling_ -

_THUMP._

To his right, the other hand landed, this one so shattered that it couldn’t even grip, mangled fingers twisting out at all angles.

“El…?” Dustin breathed.

Water streamed down as the bulbous body rose above their heads, bigger than the Demogorgan, and almost taller than Dustin’s house.

El’s weak and frightened eyes met his. He gulped.

“I don’t think you should’ve broken it’s fingers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for sticking with me - things are finally gonna start getting interesting. You guys better strap in, 'cos it's monster time...
> 
> WSQ


	11. Chapter 11

Arms fully extended, the monster stood just shy of a double decker bus. It’s bulbous, purple-white body looked like some horror from the deep ocean: long, twisted and shining with more than water. And it’s head…

Max didn’t even wanna think about it. It just looked like the body cut off, but with a jaw jam-packed with so many teeth it wouldn’t close. A jaw that fell open and unleashed a brain-jarring screech.

Tilting its head down, the monster scanned the ground below it with two massive globes that almost could’ve passed for a pair of eyes, had they looked anything like them. Maybe insect’s eyes, she thought to herself. And only at a stretch. Whatever they were, though, they clearly worked – it zoned in on El and Dustin, who still stood, clinging to one another between its arms.

It was useless, El trying to run. She was way too weak, too slow – she’d never make it. And God, did she know it. Even from this distance, Max could see the horror and fear twisting her brows.

The monster moved its good hand.

El spotted it before Dustin. Her eyes whipped from the slow-moving threat to the face of the boy beside her. Her grip slipped from his collar.

“El, what are you-”

Dustin never got to finish his sentence. With the last of her strength, Eleven pressed a hand between his shoulder blade and thrust him through the air, in a graceful, screaming arc, where he came to rest heavily at their feet.

Dread sent chills up Max’s back. She locked eyes with El, holding her gaze like it might freeze her in place, protected from the creature that was reaching for her.

Fingers snapped around El’s body. She didn’t even have time to scream. The monster drew her up before its face, studying her, and to give her her due, El at least tried to put up a fight. Her hands clawed at the bony fingers, legs kicking out beneath her. But she was tired, too tired, and it opened its jaws once again-

The rock glimmered in the corner of Max’s eye.

There was no question of her own safety. “Back off, you piece of shit!”

As soon as her fingers closed around it, Max scrambled to her feet and catapulted the sharp stone in an overhand that would make the baseball jocks jealous beyond belief.

The projectile was nothing more than a slight distraction to the creature. It barely even twitched. Still, it seemed to rouse El long enough to stretch out her arm, brows furrowing in that all-too-familiar look.

Hope dared to bloom in Max’s stomach. Maybe. Just maybe. But the wail of pain that followed was like the toll of a death-bell. El’s shuddering hand pulled back, falling instead against her furrowed forehead.

“She’s out of battery!” Will cried desperately.

“No.” Mike shook his head. “No way – it’s doing something to her.”

Max could’ve hit them both. “Who cares?! Somebody do something!”

Steve was first to go, leaping over a dazed Dustin, nailbat raised above his head as he roared his charging cry.

“Hey, you overgrown earthworm! Let her go!”

He gave an almighty swing, bringing the bat down on the creature’s arm with a sickening crunch of bone. It snarled, and as it did, so it’s fingers tightened around El’s midriff, forcing a howl of agony from her lips.

Another valiant swing hit home, tearing straight through its elbow and ripping the arm clean off. With a bone-jarring thud, El hit the gravel.

The monster pulled back, screaming. Black blood showered the ground. Steve dropped the bat and ran to El’s side, tried to rouse her. She moved. Barely.

“El? Hey, come on. Come on!”

Eyelashes fluttered. Eyes rolled weakly into position, tried to focus. Found the arm that had tried to crush her lying, severed and useless, a few feet away. It began to sizzle, turning from white to purple to black, shrivelling into nothing like it had been dipped in acid.

That was new.

“Hey.” Steve brushed a hand over the side of her face. “Hey, hey. You okay?”

She gazed into his face, gathering a reply, when her eyes flashed somewhere behind his head and went wide as dinner plates.

Because the creature was recovering itself, and it fixed its eyes down once again.

El gripped Steve’s collar.

Steve put his body between the monster and the girl.

_Bang!_

A gunshot rang out, and Max whipped around to see Nancy, smoking rifle in hand, slamming another bullet into the breech.

“Steve, get out of there!” She screamed.

He did as he was told, snatching El up and tossing her easily over his shoulder as another shot rang out.

Where rocks did nothing, bullets seemed to have a greater effect. Every shot that echoed made the creature’s head jerk back, and it snapped its jaws uselessly as its prey weaved his way between its arms, retrieved the nailbat and made a home run for freedom.

The group pulled together as Steve dropped El between them, banding around her to keep her upright until she had her arms firmly over Mike and Dustin’s shoulders. All eyes turned to the monster, and the barrel of Nancy’s gun dropped. It had gone strangely… quiet.

Body jerking and twisting, it shook and strained, and suddenly, a pair of long, skinny limbs broke away from where they were crumpled against its back, slowly unfolding and unsticking until the webbed fingers spread like fans.

Wings.

It had _wings_.

And Joyce Byers was determined to stop it using them.

As the creature reared up, beating tentatively at the air, she leapt forward, axe raised, and, just as it made a grab for her, she buried it deep into its slimy chest.

“Not my kids, you bitch.”

Mrs. Byers leaned hard on the weapon, pressing it down and down until it ripped a hole big enough for her to fit inside.

The monster howled, rising up, writhing and shrieking. Then, like a felled tree, it overbalanced, toppled, and disappeared into the black waters of the lake.

All that was left was the dark, smouldering smudge of black goo that had once been its arm.

~

Billy answered the phone. Because of course he did.

“Who’s calling?”

“Billy, it’s me.”

He paused for a moment, voice husky with accusation. “Where are you?”

“I’m at the Byer’s house, and I’m sleeping over.”

“No.”

Max’s temper flared. “I’m not staying in a room with boys, if that’s what you’re-”

“Neil’s expecting you home.”

She swallowed loudly. Of course he was. “Well… tell him he can ring me back if he needs me.”

“Max-”

But she didn’t give him time to argue, slamming the phone back on the hook and stalking away. This was a future-Max problem. Now-Max had other things to worry about. Like monsters and saving the world.

Will’s mum had set out her own bedroom for Max and El to stay in, and offered her an over-sized shirt to sleep in. But, while there was still light outside the windows and dinner was still baking in the oven, the boys were staying as close to each other as possible, and there was no way she was going to miss out on that.

Jonathan and Nancy had insisted that anyone who got wet had a shower, and they’d ferried them through, one at a time, like a conveyer belt of cleanliness. It didn’t matter how warm the shower had been, though – Lucas seemed to have contracted the permanent shakes.

Max kept a tight grip on his arm as they sat on the floor with their backs to the sofa, pressing herself into him, because she really didn’t know if the shaking was cold, or shock, or fear. Or worse.

He glanced sideways at her. “You okay?”

“Me?” Max scoffed. It was baffling, how he was still thinking about her, even after everything. “You’re an idiot, Stalker.”

He snorted out a laugh. “Maybe.”

The roughness of his voice left a sour feeling on her chest. “Are _you_ okay?”

“I think so.” Lucas sounded fairly convinced, at least.

They shared a moment of silence, tuning out of the soft babble of conversation – Dustin and Steve’s jibes, Mrs Byers, Nancy and Jonathan’s forward planning, Mike and Will’s quiet conversation: it all faded into the background as Max closed her eyes and savoured the warmth of Lucas’s cheek pressing into the top of her head.

She could’ve stayed like that forever, too, if something else hadn’t tugged at her attention. There was someone missing from the equation. Max gently slipped from under Lucas’s arm, offering him a smile by way of apology, before springing to her feet and heading for the master bedroom.

The door was open just a crack, but when Max checked, it was all as it had been when they’d left it. She took a deep breath, then pressed herself silently through the gap.

El hadn’t showered. In fact, they were lucky to keep her awake long enough for her to take off her sodden clothes and put on one of Nancy’s nightgowns (Max wasn’t going to think about just exactly why _that_ might be hanging around in Jonathan’s bedroom). It was there, on top of the bedspread, they’d left her sleeping on her side, hair still caked and sticking to her face as it dried.

Max lingered for a moment, just long enough to check she was still breathing. Then, she turned to go.

“Max.”

The girl span on the spot. “Wh… how did you know it was me?”

“I can see you.”

 _Obviously_. With the curtains drawn, she could barely see anyway. Max didn’t want to think how creepy she must have looked.

“I just… y’know. I came to see how you are.” She fumbled her words, the most fatal of errors for someone trying to play it cool. “…How are you feeling?”

El’s shining eyes met hers, beacons in the darkness, unreadable. Then, gradually, dreadfully, she shook her head.

“It’s not dead.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone reovered from Season 3 yet? No? 
> 
> Me neither...
> 
> WSQ


	12. Chapter 12

Light was just barely peeking through the curtains when an odd chill roused Max from her well-earned slumber. Which was strange, because the quilt was still pulled right up underneath her chin. At first, she was determined to just go back to sleep and forget about it. If she wasn’t already dead, then whatever it was wasn’t going to kill her.

Still, the unease persisted, and Max begrudgingly opened her eyes. Well, eye. The other was buried deep into the pillow. Nothing seemed to be out of place in the room – just the same old wardrobe with its broken hinge, the same chair piled high with Mrs. Byer’s ironing pile.

She rolled over, stretching her back out and turning towards El.

Except that El wasn’t there.

Max jerked upright then, all hope of falling asleep again gone in an instant. In fact, for a moment, it was all she could do to just stare at the empty bed, the covers pulled back from the edge. Then, shaking herself out of the shock, she took a flying leap across the duvet and scrambled out of the door.

Across the hallway, Will’s door was ajar, and through it, she could see all four of the boys still wrapped in blissful slumber – Will on his bed, Mike by his side on the floor, and Lucas and Dustin damn near on top of each other at their feet. She was about to wake them when a small sound caught her ear.

The latch on the front door was clicking gently closed.

How she’d managed to get past Mrs Byers without rousing her, Max would never know, but now, it was time to run the gauntlet for herself. Eyes fixed on the door, she tiptoed across the living room, holding her breath until her bare toes touched the prickly welcome mat. Then, twisting the lock, she cast a hurried glance over her shoulder, checking that Mrs Byer’s hadn’t moved, and carefully crept out.

From the top of the steps, she spotted El, already halfway down the drive. She’d already retrieved her damp clothes from where Will’s mum had left them to dry and was heading out into the world at a frantic pace, shoulders hunched and eye forward.

Max hopped down the steps, trotting along the grass and trying to avoid the stones that dug into her feet. It didn’t really work, though.

“Hey!”

El froze. Really froze, like a statue, not even turning around.

Max gulped, stealing closer. “Where are you going?”

El’s shoulders drooped. Maybe she was accepting the fact that she wouldn’t get away with it now. Turning back, she simply shrugged.

Max raised her eyebrows. “You’re not going looking for Hopper again, are you?”

El shook her head.

_Oh._

“So… what are you doing out here?”

“…Walking.”

“I can see that.” Max tried to smile warmly, but she wasn’t exactly sure she managed it. “Where are you walking _to_?”

Again, El shrugged. _God, it’s like talking to Lucas about his feelings_.

“El…”

“Just walking.”

“At 5 in the morning?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Max folded her arms, looking her friend (was she a friend now?) up and down. “You’re going after the monster, aren’t you?”

The other girl looked away. _Bingo_.

“What, are you _trying_ to get yourself killed? Don’t you remember what it did to you?”

“I can fight it. I’m ready this time.”

“Really? ‘Cos I’m sure I heard you say that last time.”

El’s brows knitted together in a dangerously angry scowl.

Max scoffed. It wasn’t very sensitive - she realised that. But, really, what did El expect to happen? That when she killed it, the monster would burst into a cloud of confetti that would fall to the ground and reveal her dad, just standing and waiting for her?

Nobody could be that naïve.

“Okay, okay. So say you could go out there and kill it. How’s that supposed to get Hopper back? You’re gonna, what, go in there like Red Riding Hood and cut him out of its stomach?” El was bristling, which was scary enough in itself. Max bit her tongue, but she held her ground. “I really think you gotta consider the possibility that he’s… he’s not coming back.”

A tear found its way down El’s cheek. She’d clearly considered it.

“No.”

“El…”

“No!”

El turned on her heel and stormed away, and Max felt that familiar spike of fury.

“Hey!” She began to give chase, as fast as she dared, stumbling as sharp stones jabbed the soles of her bare feet. “Hey, El! What are you doing?”

No response.

“El! Will you stop being such a drama queen?”

Still nothing. Max scoffed.

“Fine. Guess I’ll just have to come with you.”

The last thing Max saw was El’s face as she whipped around. The next moment, all she could see was stars that danced and dipped and slowly drained to black.

 

~*~

 

Mike passed the towel full of ice to Lucas, who gingerly pressed it into the side of Max’s head.

“I’m telling you,” she was weakly saying, “She just totally flipped out. Completely psycho. I didn’t even see it coming.”

Mike had been the one to find the girl lying out in the Byer’s yard, red hair streaked with crimson, eyes rolling and barely conscious. At first, he was afraid that El had been taken. That was, until Max had woken up enough to tell him that his girlfriend had done this herself.

And that was totally unlike El. At least, it was totally unlike her to flip her shit at someone she didn’t really know, and especially unprovoked. Not that he believed it could’ve been completely motiveless. Not with Max and her big mouth involved.

“We need to go out and find her.”

Lucas’s head whipped around, staring at Mike like he was crazy. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“She could be in danger!”

“Well, that’s her problem! She’s clearly desperate to be out there, so why should we stop her?”

Mike sighed. “I know, I know. What she did was totally out of line. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are still people out there looking for her.”

“And a huge tooth-monster.” Max croaked.

The Party turned to her, eyes wide.

“Wait, no. Hold on.” Dustin’s brows knitted. “Will’s mum killed it. We all saw her do it.”

Max slowly shook her head. “Last night, when I went to check on her, El told me it wasn’t dead. I mean… don’t ask me how she knew…”

Mike, Lucas and Dustin exchanged looks. However crazy it sounded, El was rarely wrong.

Before they could say any more, however, Joyce came bustling in, Jonathan and Nancy in tow. She immediately made for the couch, crouching in front of Max.

“Hey, sweetie. How you feeling?”

Max winced as Mrs Byer’s hand brushed against her cheek, leaning away. “F-fine. Thanks.”

“I’m gonna go get us all a nice lunch from the store. You want anything? Antiseptic, asperin, ice pack-”

“No thanks. I’m fine.”

Joyce smile weakly, nodding. She then stood to go, heading for the door.

“Mrs. Byers?” She froze, turning back to look. Mike scuffed a foot along the floor. “Is… is Will okay?”

The woman smiled sadly. “He’ll be alright. I think the cold water just made him sick. Well, more sick.”

Mike nodded, but there was no way he believed her. She didn’t even believe herself, by the looks of it. “Can I go see him?”

Joyce cracked a wider smile at that. “Sure. I think he’d like that.”

~

Mike gently pushed the door open, peeking around it, just in case. Will’s room was dark, the curtains still drawn, but he was definitely still in bed. Eyes open, his gaze flew up to Mike as soon as he realised he wasn’t alone.

Mike swallowed. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Slipping into the room, Mike pushed the door to and perched on the end of Will’s bed. The other boy pushed himself up, leaning back against the headboard.

“How are you feeling?”

“…Okay. I guess.”

Will didn’t look okay. But, weirdly, he didn’t look sick either. He wasn’t pale or sweating, not like a normal illness. It was like the sickness was buried inside him, hiding in his wide, brown eyes.

Mike bit his lip. “Look… I know something’s going on. I promise I won’t tell anyone else – not even your mum - but… you can trust me, remember? Even if it sounds crazy.”

Will smiled – only a little, but it was something.

“What is it, Will? What’s going on?”

He wanted to tell him. He really, really did. But what was he supposed to say?

 _I think I have superpowers just like El_.

It wasn’t as simple as that.

“Is… is she really gone?”

Mike was taken aback by the question, but he managed a nod. “She thinks it’s still alive.”

Will bit his lip. “And you’re not out looking for her?”

Mike didn’t have a reply for that, so they just sat and stared into their laps. Finally, Will whispered, “I think I need to talk to her.”

“To El?”

“Yeah. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but… I don’t know what’s happening. And maybe… maybe if I talk to El, I can work it out. _We_ can work it out.”

Will watched Mike consider it, deep furrows forming in his brow. Then, finally, he nodded.

“You know what? I think you’re probably right.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” Mike gave him that smirk, the kind that meant it was cool, that everything was gonna be okay. “Yeah, I really do. Let’s go out there, find El, and then we can work out what the hell is going on around here.”

Mike stood, holding out a hand, and Will felt his heart soar as he reached out and took it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi Everyone! Good news - the script I'm writing for my dissertation is conpleted, which means it's only the essay to go! That means I might even have a little more time for this story...  
> I drew the monster earlier, and now I wish AO3 had an illustration option. Oh well! If people wanna see it, maybe I'll link you to my Tumblr and put it there.   
> Thanks for all the love!
> 
> WSQ


	13. Chapter 13

Dustin and Lucas were deep in conversation when Mike and Will reappeared, and Max, only half-listening, was resting her head on her boyfriend’s knees, her legs dangling from the arm of the sofa. She stirred at the sound of hurried footsteps.

The conversation was something about a monster. Unimportant. Mike wasted no time in interrupting them.

“Where the hell is Nancy?”

Dustin shrugged, looking more than a little annoyed. “They went off looking for El - all three of them. Wouldn’t even let us come with them.”

“Fine. We don’t need them.” Mike’s face set in a firm grimace of determination that had Lucas sending a knowing grimace at his friend. “Will, you got a map of Hawkins?”

“Sure.” Will dashed into the kitchen, throwing open the junk drawer and rummaging through the piles of old batteries, emergency torches, and objects-that-might-come-in-handy.

Mike turned to Max. “How’s your head?”

“Good enough,” she replied quickly, rocking herself up from Lucas’s lap. The boy breathed a sigh of relief as the blood returned to his legs. He then fixed Mike with a searching gaze.

“If we’re looking for El - which I’m guessing we are - what’s the map for?” Lucas sat forward as Will swept in, throwing the chart open like a tablecloth and laying it on the floor. “We know Hawkins like the backs of our hands.”

“Some of us don’t have a photographic memory, genius,” Dustin retorted.

Mike knelt by the chart, tracing his finger along Mirkwood, then out towards Kerley and the quarry road. “If they’re heading for the quarry, then this is the route Nancy, Steve and Jonathan are gonna take. It’s the shortest route by road, sure - but El’s not that stupid.”

“She’s safer going cross-country.” Dustin caught on quickly.

Lucas nodded, leaning closer. “And she’s done it before.”

“So our best bet is going straight through the woods and onto Kerley that way,” Mike finished.

“What if she’s gone a different way?” Max looked around the circle of blank faces “I mean, if she doesn’t wanna be followed, why go the way we expect her to?”

Will looked at Mike. “She’s got a point.”

“We should look at all the possibilities,” Dustin murmured, finger hovering over the many streets that could lead them to where the quarry road met Kerley Boulevard. “Mike, I hate to say it, but-”

“No. We’re not splitting the party.”

Max shook her head, exasperated. “Come on, Mike, don’t you wanna find her?”

“We’ve got radios,” Will reasoned. “And if we go in a pair and a three, we’re not alone. We’re not tracking a monster, Mike. This is El! She wouldn’t hurt us.”

Lucas and Max fixed him with a doubtful look.

“Okay, okay! But now she’s had time to cool off-”

“Fine.” Mike shook his head. “Okay, fine. Steve, Nancy and Jonathan took the main roads, so… we’ll head around the trailer park and through the woods onto Kerley. Max and Lucas, from there, you guys can head into the housing estate, in case she’s trying to throw us off. Keep in contact, and radio as soon as you find her.”

~

Lucas and Max peeled off into the maze of suburban estates, leaving Mike and Dustin walking shoulder to shoulder, Will following behind them. Their eyes scanned through the thinning trees as they left the forest and joined the end of Kerley Boulevard. Seeing how close it was now, Mike was mentally kicking himself. If, after the first quarry incident, they’d taken El through here to the Byers instead of back to Hopper’s cabin, things might have been different. Far different.

The way Dustin caught his eye, Mike could tell he was trying to work out what he was thinking.

“Okay, listen. When we find El, I think… maybe you guys should take a step back, let me handle it.”

He was waiting for backlash, but Dustin just nodded sagely.

“I know you might not like this, Mike, but I think Nancy, Jonathan and Steve are gonna find her first. I mean, it’s been ages since she left. She’s probably there by now.”

Mike chewed at the inside of his cheek. “I just don’t understand it. She’s never taken off like this before.”

Dustin laughed, until he realised it wasn’t a joke. “Wait, you’re serious? Mike, come on. How about the time she knocked Lucas out? Or the time she ran from Hopper and ended up in Chicago?”

Mike simply scowled.

As they reached the edge of the trees and stepped down onto the sidewalk, he paused, sweeping the area carefully. Kerley Boulevard ran right along the edge of the woods, with houses one side and endless trees on the other. When nothing out of the ordinary presented itself, he turned over his shoulder, and spotted Will lingering far behind.

“Will? You okay?”

The boy looked up in surprise but nodded quickly. “Yeah. Sorry, I’m just kinda… tired.”

As he turned back, Mike found Dustin giving him a knowing look. He frowned. “What?”

“Oh, er… Nothing.”

A car engine roared, and Mike whipped around to the sight of Steve’s Beemer pulling around the corner, chugging slowly along the road towards them. Without a second thought, he broke into a run, and Dustin and Will followed him until Steve pulled up at the curb and Nancy and Jonathan leapt out of the backseat.

Swooping down on them, Jonathan was first to fix them with a disapproving glare. “What are you guys even doing out here?”

Mike ignored him, turning to his sister. “Anything?”

Nancy shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mike…”

The car revved, Steve leaning across towards the open window. “Tell me Max and Lucas are still at the cabin.”

Dustin shook his head, oblivious. “No way, dude, they’re in the estate checking things out.”

Steve stared for a moment, slack-jawed, then slicked a hand through his hair. “Alright, cool, that’s cool. Totally fine.” He puffed out his cheeks. “I’m gonna do another circuit, see if I can pick them up.”

Without waiting for an answer, the Beemer pulled away, disappearing into the next side road.

Dustin crinkled his nose. “The hell was that about?”

Jonathan turned back to the group, biting his lips nervously “We didn’t find El. But we’ve found something else…”

“And you’re not gonna like it,” Nancy grimaced.

Mike looked back at Dustin and Will, cringing at the reflection of his fear in their eyes.

Will turned to his brother. “What did you find?”

~

“I swear, El is so dead when she comes back.” Lucas was fiddling with the Wrist-Rocket on his arm as he and Max searched the estate.

“Oh, come on, Lucas.”

“She hurt you!”

“I’ve had worse from my skateboard.”

“Yeah, well, your skateboard doesn’t know any better.”

Max released a long, heavy sigh, brushing her fingers through her hair, where the strands were still matted with blood. “Your head always bleeds more than anywhere else. The cut’s tiny. Seriously, it’s fine.”

Lucas grabbed her arm and pulled her up, then took her face in his hands and inspected it, pulling her eyelid down and peering into her eye. He only got that far because Max was too bemused to stop him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“You gotta be concussed or something.”

She grabbed his hands, forcing them down. “I’m not concussed! Stop!”

“You’re not mad at her.”

“No.”

“But you’re always mad at everyone.”

Max stared at him in disbelief. “No, Lucas, I’m always mad at _you_ , because you’re an _idiot._ ”

He cracked a cheesy grin. “I’m _your_ idiot.”

Max rolled her eyes but didn’t humour him with a reply, continuing down the estate. After a moment, she met his curious gaze again. “I dunno. I just can’t be mad at her. I don’t know why.”

“She threw you five feet and split your head open!”

Max folded her arms, her brows knitted tightly in thought. “It… It’s weird, but… just before I blacked out, I saw her face, and… she just… she just looked so _scared_.”

Lucas baulked. “Scared? Of what?”

Max bit her lip. Wasn’t that just the question?

They reached a junction where the road split into two, one side disappearing into a maze of cul-de-sacs and the other doubling back on itself. Though they looked both ways, but there didn’t seem to be any obvious signs.

“You got your radio on you?” Lucas asked, and when she nodded, he gestured down the sidewalk.  “You take left, I take right?”

“Sure.”

~

“I-I don’t understand – it was here just a second ago!” Nancy span in a circle, like whatever it was would just appear again, as if by magic. Blink and you’ll miss it.

“What was?” Mike was getting frustrated now. Dustin eyed him warily. He wasn’t prepared for another Mike-Wheeler-brand freak-out.

Jonathan stepped in before anything could escalate. “You remember those white vans from when you guys first found El?”

“Yeah?” Mike nodded.

Wil frowned. “No?”

Jonathan raised a hand, pointing. “See the house down there, with the red banner in the window? Not five minutes ago, we saw one on its driveway.”

“Shut up,” Dustin breathed. Because this couldn’t be happening. Not again. And not now, with El God-knows-where, wondering about in the open. He looked at Mike, then Will, saw the same pale pinch in each of their faces.

“I know that house.” Mike cast a glance at him, and Dustin nodded. On the top floor, he caught sight of a pale face, and then the curtains flew across the window.

“Troy,” He murmured.

“But if it was there a minute ago,” Will breathed, his voice barely more than a trembling whisper, “then… where is it now?”

Nancy tapped her nail against her teeth. “Wherever it is, we have to find it.”

~

The five were fanned out on either side of the road when Lucas appeared from one of the cul-de-sacs. He lit up at the sight of them. “Whoa! Where the hell did you guys come from?”

“Find anything?” Mike sounded heartbreakingly hopeful.

Lucas pursed his lips in an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, Mike. I got nothing.”

As the boy trotted across the road to join them, Dustin’s eyes strafed the area, deceptively keen. “Hey, Lucas, where’s your girlfriend?”

“She took the other road. If we carry on to the top, we’ll meet her.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, ignoring the size of Mike’s eyes. “What? She has a radio, she can call us.”

“Yeah, that’s really gonna help when the bad men turn up and take her!”

Lucas scoffed. “Mike, the bad men died nearly two years ago.”

“Oh yeah? Then how come Nancy and Jonathan just saw one of their vans parked outside Troy’s house?”

Stunned to silence, the other boy looked to Dustin and Will, daring them to tell him it was true. They could only look uncomfortably away.

“This is crazy,” Dustin muttered. “El having visions, monsters that can’t die, and now the bad men are back…”

“Let’s just hope El doesn’t find it,” Will breathed. “And they don’t find her.”

As they lost themselves in uneasy thought, a strange shape caught Nancy’s eyes, perched atop a nearby roof.

“Wait… what is that thing?”

Jonathan followed her gaze. “A… plastic eagle?”

“Isn’t that kind of a weird thing to put on your roof?”

“Not that weird,” he shrugged. “Scares off the other birds so they don’t nest up there. Like a decoy or something.”

Nancy nodded.

Dustin, however, stared at them, his jaw going slack. Then he leapt in the air, clapping his hands together.

“Jonathan, you’re a genius!” The Party swung around to face him as he let out a mad little laugh. “Will, you still got your D&D game book at home?”

“Sure, but I-”

He had no time to finish before Dustin had snatched his elbow and was sprinting back the way they came, towards home. Jonathan cast a hurried glance at Nancy, like he was asking for permission, before he too dashed off, only a beat behind them.

Mike took a few steps, watching them leave without him. “Hey! _Hey_! Where are you going? We’re supposed to be looking for El!”

Not one of them looked back.

Mike scowled. “Assholes.”

“Mike!”

He swung around to face his sister. “What? It’s like they don’t even care!”

Nancy looked him up and down, expression unreadable, Lucas lingering by her side.

“We care though, right?” She quirked an eyebrow, then held out a hand. “Come on. We can find her, I know it.”

~

If Max was being really honest with herself, her head was beginning to spin. It was only a little, mind you – but she was beginning to think that she’d really like to sit down. Just for a minute. There was one last corner to turn, and then she could go back, meet up with Lucas, maybe persuade him to call off the search and go home.

Not that she really wanted to. There was danger in the air, almost thick enough to taste.

This part of the estate looked like any other middle-class suburb – tall, narrow semis with wide yards and shiny, second-hand cars. Each had a neatly cropped hedge running along the front, and the tarmac road was wide and smooth. Perfect for skating.

She was just about to turn back when something caught her eyes. A dark shape, barely moving against the darkness of the shrubs behind it. Max narrowed her eyes, stepping a little closer.

She was 50 yards away when she finally realised what it was. Or, rather, who.

El.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Still working on somewhere to put that drawing - it'll need fiddling with before I can get away with putting it online, but I've also got a dissertation to finish before I do that, so...  
> Love to you all,
> 
> WSQ


	14. Chapter 14

She was just sort of… staring. Swaying from foot to foot on the edge of the sidewalk, her eyes seemingly fixed on the house in front of her, though, from this distance, it was hard to tell. Max almost hurried closer, before a sharp throb in the back of her head reminded her just why that was such a bad idea. Instead, she crept about as close as she dared.

Even closer, it was impossible to figure what the girl was doing. She almost seemed… stuck.

“…El?”

The girl jerked around suddenly, cheeks burning with the shame of being caught. She eyed Max warily, like an injured animal.

Like _she_ was injured. Max bristled.

“What the hell are you doing out here?”

El hardened and stared her down, turning her whole body to face the other girl.

Max’s bravado wavered, and she shuffled uncomfortably. If worst came to worst, she could always make a run for it.

“You can’t come,” El said.

“Come? Come where? To fight the monster?” Max snorted indignantly. “You’re going to fight the monster in the quarry from all the way out here? If you were going to do that, you’d be there by now.”

“You need to go home.”

“So do you! Do you even know how worried everyone is about you?”

El regarded her warily. “Worried?”

“Yes! Steve is doing his nut, and Mike’s almost losing his damn mind. What, you think you can act up like this and everyone will still be cool with it?”

“I’m not acting up.”

“You threw me across the driveway and knocked me out!”

The words hung in the air between them. Max could see a little twitch in El’s eye, a little flicker of regret _. Alright, maybe more than a flicker_.

“I have… to be alone.”

“Alone? Why alone?”

“Because…” She struggled for a moment for the words.

“Because what, El? Because you’re too damn proud to ask for help?”

“Because something’s wrong with me!” The wail was like nothing Max had ever heard from her – plaintive, frightened, unsure. “Something’s wrong with me, and… and I don’t know what.”

The admission sent Max’s stomach plunging down into her legs. She’d thought it was just losing Hopper, that El was just acting up because she was hurting and didn’t know how to say it. What hadn’t occurred to her was the possibility of something worse than that, worse than even Mind Flayers and Demodogs… the possibility that something bad could be happening to El that she didn’t have any control over.

“El…” Max moved forward, but the other girl flinched away.

“You should stay away.”

Max was about to reply when the snarl of an engine cut her short. El’s defiant face dissolved in an instant, her expression growing dread-filled, and the way her whole body recoiled from the sight turned Max’s stomach.

She span around.

A white van mounted the curb, heading straight for them. Brakes screeched. Max staggered back and was met with the emblazoned blue message.

 _Hawkins Power and Light_.

The sun glinted off a pair of sunglasses as the van’s window rolled down. El yelped. The next moment, Max felt an odd, sharp pain in her shoulder.

She frowned. There had been no noise, and yet, El was beside her, screaming her name, eyes frosting over. Max lifted her hand, let her fingers drift across her shirt until it found the red-plumed end of a drug dart.

_Shit._

~

The door slammed open as Dustin crashed through it, Will at his shoulder.

Jonathan was right behind them, grabbing the door before they could rip it off its hinges. “Dustin, what the hell-”

“The book!” Dustin ignored him. “Will, get the book!”

The boy hurried off towards his bedroom, crashing to his knees beside the bed and thrusting his hands underneath it. If he remembered rightly, then it should be…

Pulling it out with a flourish, Will slammed his game book into the carpet. Dustin was hovering beside him, and threw it open to the familiar list of monsters, dragging a finger down the page and muttering to himself.

Jonathan hovered over them both, his hand finding its way to his brother’s shoulder. “What are you thinking?”

“Ah, ah! I’m concentrating.”

Will cocked an eyebrow, which made Jonathan smile.

“Almost, almost… there!” Dustin stabbed a finger into the book, and the other boys leaned closer. Where he’d landed sat a picture of what looked like an ugly little gargoyle, cross-legged and floating.

Wil frowned. “The… Berbalang?”

“Exactly.”

~

The world tilted sideways.

_SHIT._

Staggering helplessly, Max somehow managed to keep her feet. Vision swimming, she looked up again, squinting at the odd images. The van’s door crashing open, a pair of black-suited men leaping out, heading straight for them. El standing in front of her, raising her hands, freezing them in place.

Max saw the third figure appear behind El, but she couldn’t force the words from her mouth. Her tongue refused to cooperate. She could only give a pathetic half-scream as a warning, and it wasn’t enough.

The woman grabbed El under the chin, yanking her head up, plunged something deep into her neck. Max watched helplessly as the girl struggled, as the numbness swallowed her body, as she sagged to the floor.

Gone.

Max’s knees gave way, and she crashed heavily into the concrete.

A pair of shoes swam into her vision, followed by an odd, clicking sound, like the cocking of a gun.

Perhaps it was. Max didn’t have the strength to think about it.

The black tendrils seeped into her vision, and for the second time that day, she could only hang on as the darkness claimed her for its own.

~

A sudden, strange noise had Mike standing bolt upright, his gaze swinging wildly from side to side. Somewhere further down the estate, there came the snarl of engines, faint, but growing louder.

Nancy, too, had stopped in her tracks. “What the hell…?”

Looking between them, Lucas kept his lips tight, hiding a frown. “Probably just some assholes shredding rubber.”

He wanted to believe it. Painfully, desperately. But Mike knew it couldn’t be coincidence, and he remembered all too vividly the way the bad men had driven.

And when the screaming started, it couldn’t have been any more convincing.

Mike broke into a sprint.

~

When Steve rounded the corner, it was like every nightmare he’d ever suffered through had come to life.

The van. The woman. The gun.

The girl on the ground.

Jerking the wheel, He sent the Beemer leaping up onto the curb, and before the hand-break was even on, he’d opened the door. Seatbelt flying, heart racing, feet pounding, Steve sprinted towards them.

“Hey! HEY!”

The woman looked up.

Her finger tightened on the trigger. He could almost see her weighing up her options. He’d already caught her. She might as well kill them both.

Then, quick as the gun she was holding, the door of the van flew open and she jumped in.

He should’ve run her down in his car. As the van’s tires skidded and squealed, as it went flying backwards onto the road and sped away, Steve realised he’d missed his chance. He could only heave for breath as he watched the van disappear around the corner, threading his fingers into his hair.

“Shit.”

Steve turned, and his hands slammed into his thighs.

“ _Shit_.”

Max was sprawled on the sidewalk, legs tucked uncomfortably under her twisted body, head resting in a fiery bed of orange. A chord tugged in his chest, and Steve dropped to his knees beside her, gently tapping his fingers against her cheek.

“Max. Max! Hey, come on. Get up.”

Nothing. Steve sucked a breath through his teeth. He scanned her body, tugging her jacket back out of the way, but the bloom of blood from a bullet was nowhere to be seen. Only then did he spot the little flash of crimson on the ground beside her, pinched the tiny dart in his fingers and held it to the light. Whatever was in it was bright blue and… weird looking.

“Son of a bitch… Max, get up!”

Her lashes twitched. Just barely, but he saw it.

“Max?”

The muscles at the corner of her lips twitched, just enough to form a word.

“El…”

It took a moment, but the realisation was like a ton of bricks slamming into his shoulders. Of course. Steve kicked himself.

Max’s head lolled to the side, drifting once again. Steve hesitated. Craning his neck, he just caught a glimpse of the white van racing along Kerley and turning out of sight.

And there, impatient on the kerb, his Beemer hummed, the engine still running.

~*~

Mike led the charge down the road, feet pounding on tarmac, breath huffing in frantic gasps. Behind him, he could hear Lucas with the radio to his mouth.

“Max! Do you copy? Where are you? Over!”

Lungs burning, Mike put his head down and listened. The car engines had stopped, and so had the shouting. The estate had turned eerily silent.

At the end of the road, they skidded to a halt, scanning the area. Houses, hedges, all looked normal. No people, though.

“El!” He shouted out hopefully, but there was no reply. Only his pounding heart and heaving breath.

Lucas’s hand met his shoulder, and, looking into his eyes, Mike felt a pang of guilt. His friend looked so understanding and gentle, like he was empathising. Like he hadn’t just lost a girlfriend of his own.

“Lucas, I… I’m…”

“Holy shit.” Nancy’s high-pitched squeak cut straight through him like a chill. “Are you guys seeing this?”

Mike turned, and almost immediately wished he hadn’t.

Tire marks snaked all over the grass, ugly brown scars torn through the green. Like whoever it was had made a quick getaway. Not only that, but a pair of black streaks smeared their way up the road beyond.

Mike had to grab Lucas’s shoulder – his knees no longer wanted to hold him up.

They’d found her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi Everyone! Sorry it's been so long, but with my dissertation finally handed in, my free time is now my own again! And that means I can start on this fic again, which I'm really excited about. Thanks for sticking with me! 
> 
> WSQ


	15. Chapter 15

They were going to kill her, plain and simple. Troy tucked himself deeper into the shadow of the house, cowering, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes like it could erase what he’d seen.

It hadn’t crossed his mind, just how insane someone would have to be to be chasing down a kid his age. How insane you’d have to be to put a needle like that in her neck and grin when she stopped struggling. Nor had he considered what it might mean for anyone who got in the way. Thank God for Steve Harrington – if he hadn’t turned up, that Max girl would probably have been shot.

Why did he care? He barely knew her.

Troy heaved a shaky breath, pushing himself to his feet. There was still one person he was looking for.

Except, this time, he needed to be alone.

~

“The Berbalang is an evil, flesh-eating monster from the astral plane. It’s physical body spends most of its life hibernating while its spirit wonders, but it comes back at the full moon to feed.”

Jonathan studied Dustin’s face. “Ok, but just because it has wings doesn’t mean it’s our monster.”

“It’s not just the wings, Jonathan!” Dustin sounded disgusted. “Look, here – The Berbalang has the ability to create a duplicate of itself – a projection-”

“A decoy,” Will finished.

Silence held. Jonathan drew a hand down his face, Dustin chewed his lip, and Will stared at the table between his hands.

“So…” In a wavering voice, Jonathan broke the silence. “How do we kill it?”

Dustin scanned the page. “Well… it says here that the physical body is most often killed when the projection is.”

“But it wasn’t killed,” mumbled Will. “El knew it wasn’t dead. She could feel it.”

His older brother nodded. “Then… the best way to make sure this thing’s dead is to kill its physical form.”

“But it’s not stupid enough to hang around when we know where it is.”

“It could be anywhere in Hawkins by now!”

“Maybe El can find it?”

“Whoa, whoa, guys, hold on.” Dustin held his arms out, silencing the pair. “D’you hear that?”

A soft, strange buzzing drifted towards them. They were still for a moment, before Will made a sudden lunge for the sofa.

His hand landed on a super-comm. El’s, judging by the butterfly stickers. He whipped up the aerial and was met with Lucas’s frantic voice.

_“Max! This is a Code Red! Do you copy? The Bad Men are back, repeat, the Bad Men are back!”_

~

Nancy’s heart was jerking wildly, not just for the situation, but most of all for her brother. Mike was pale as anything, and she was sure he was biting his lips down to the flesh. Lucas, too, was restlessly pacing about, calling on the radio, his free hand fidgeting until he gave in and stopped.

“She should be here,” he grumbled uneasily.

Nancy pursed her lips as she thought. “Keep trying,” she murmured dumbly.

Lucas didn’t look too hopeful, but he lifted the super-comm to his lips and called for Max again.

“There’s no way they took her with El,” Mike murmured darkly. Though she hated the implications, Nancy had to agree. What would the Bad Men want with Max? Leverage, perhaps, but how did they know the girls knew each other?

 _“Lucas? Mike?”_ Dustin’s voice finally crackled through the airwaves. _“What’s going on, over?”_

“We’ve lost Max and El,” Lucas replied, his voice hollow, heartbroken. Nancy’s skin prickled at the sound.

_No. No way. We’re not losing anyone else._

She dropped to one knee, trailing her fingers through the churned mud of the tire tracks. They snaked all over the grass, some deep where the wheels had spun, and others light enough that it seemed the van had barely touched the ground.

Nancy frowned, following the path with a finger. What was the point in mounting the curb, coming off, and mounting again?

_Unless…_

She reached out into one set of tracks, measuring the width with her outstretched fingers. Her thumb and pinkie could just about touch the edges. Moving to the next track, however, and her hand was entirely lost in its girth.

“Mike…”

When no reply came, Nancy looked up to find her brother drifting away in the other direction, hands deep in his pockets.

“Mike!”

He froze, taking a moment to drag a hand across his face before he finally turned to face her.

Nancy swallowed thickly. “Would you just come over here?”

Her brother hesitated, hunching his shoulders, then trudged stiffly in her direction.

“Look at this,” she pointed down to the tracks. “I don’t have a measure, but… just look at these marks. These ones here are thinner, and they’re lighter, too.”

He glared, eyes flickering only slightly towards the ground. “So?”

She frowned. “So? So, there were two vehicles here, Mike! It’s not just a van, someone else was here too-”

“Who cares?” he seethed, stalking closer. “So there were two of them. What does it matter if there were fifteen cars? Or a hundred? How is that going to help us get El back?”

Nancy stood her ground, groping desperately for an answer, but there was nothing she could say.

All of a sudden, Lucas gave a shout, running straight for them.

“Guys! They got it! They know what the monster is!”

~

Joyce slung her shopping bags into the back of her car and pushed the door closed. With all the supplies she’d gathered, there was only one more item on the list: a pack of Camels.

Sure, she _could_ have picked them up from the 7-Eleven with the rest of the shopping, but she knew for a fact that Donald was working the Melvald’s counter that morning, and, more often than not, if she smiled sweetly enough at him, he let her off with a sizable discount.

Joyce checked her watch, rubbing absently at the long, thin scratch that cleaved the face in two. Of course she’d driven around and around the block looking for El. She’d made two loops of Kerley and taken the most convoluted route imaginable, in the hopes of just a glimpse, but her search was fruitless.

At least she knew she wasn’t the only one. Jonathan and his friends were mistaken if they thought she hadn’t noticed Steve’s car disappearing round the bend at the sight of her.

Then again, if they were out there, who was looking after the kids?

As she dashed around the corner and towards the glass doors, Joyce couldn’t help but notice the midnight blue Camero abandoned by the side of the road, one wheel on the pavement like it owned the place. Tutting, she passed it by.

Melvald’s was quiet, even for the middle of the day. The neatly stacked shelves lay untouched, most of the products remained exactly where she’d left them the day before. There was maybe one customer in the store, and there, propped up by the counter, Donald looked to be almost half-asleep, his spectacles beginning to slide off his long roman nose.

They were so old-fashioned, she thought to herself. Made him look even older than he was.

“Donald!”

Her boss stirred, standing to attention and blinking owlishly as she hurried, grinning, towards him.

However, before she had a chance to get there, a tall figure swept straight between them, lounging against the counter. Probably Steve’s age, a head and shoulders taller than her (though that wasn’t hard), and with messy Californian curls cascading down his shoulders. She frowned.

“Gimme a pack of Camels,” he slurred, like he was too cool to even talk properly. Donald looked between Joyce and the intruder, considering, but eventually decided against refusing custom. Typical Donald.

The boy turned to face her, slouching at the hip, his tongue playing with the toothpick he had clasped between his grinning, cat-like teeth.

“Mrs Byers, I assume?”

Joyce faltered, eyeing him up and down. The name tugged at her lips as she pieced it together. “Billy… Billy Hargrove?”

Billy’s only acknowledgement was a lazy chuckle. His blue eyes roamed all over, and she found herself folding her arms across her chest. There was something piercing about his gaze – made you feel like the only person in the room. And not in a good way.

“You’re Max’s older brother, right?”

His grin fell. “She’s not my sister.”

Joyce held her hands up in surrender.

Billy seemed to relax again. “You know where she is?”

“At my house, with her friends.” Joyce tilted her head slightly. He felt dangerous, somehow. “Why? Something wrong?”

“Only that she was meant to come home last night.”

A cigarette packet hit the counter at his elbow, and he turned, slowly, like it barely mattered to him.

“Two dollars fifty,” Donald said.

Billy pushed up from the counter and plunged his hands into his pockets, but the only sound was the jingle of his car keys. Joyce watched with sudden curious interest as his face changed rapidly from that penetrating nonchalance to confused, childish anger.

“Ah, shit,” Billy snarled, hand flying to his chin. No change. Donald quirked an eyebrow, probably half expecting him to steal the packet and run.

A note hit the counter. As Billy’s head jerked towards her, Joyce wore her best motherly smile. “I’ll send her home right away,” she promised.

Billy stared between her and the Camels. For a long time, he stood, somehow frozen, before snatching up his prize and storming out of the door.

Donald huffed with disbelief. “Kids these days. Didn’t even say thanks.”

Joyce just shrugged it off and pointed to the case behind the counter.

“Same for me, please.”

~

Billy leaned back into the rich leather of the Camero’s seat, chewing on the filter of a fresh cigarette. What kind of idiot left their wallet behind? Stupid. Now he looked like some kind of charity case.

Not that she looked like she pitied him. Billy’s eyebrows knitted, eyes on the rear-view as Joyce Byers hurry out of Melvald’s. There was something about her that felt familiar, somehow. Like a ghost.

But that didn’t make sense. Billy took a long drag, turned the smoke over on his tongue, then let it curl from his lips.

He snatched the change from his dashboard and flew out of the car door. “Mrs Byers!”

She froze, almost around the corner, and eyed him warily as he swaggered towards her.

“Hey, uh…” he chewed the word before he could let it pass his lips. “ _Thanks_. For the straights.”

Joyce gave a flustered little laugh. “Oh, it’s no problem. I’ve left my purse behind so many times…” She was silenced for a moment by the hand he held out towards her, coins clasped in a clammy grip. “O-Oh… Oh, don’t worry about that. Donald gives me a discount.”

“Come on. I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of charity case.”

“I don’t! I don’t. Just… don’t worry about it.”

Billy dropped his hand. _So be it_. “Well… look after yourself. Lotta weird talk goin’ round.”

Joyce’s heart stopped. She glared at his turned back as he strode back towards his car, regretting the question before it even left her lips.

“Weird talk? Like… what?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I'm sorry it's been so long - life update: I've been working after finishing uni and I've just started an internship at my local church which is as exciting as it is totally overwhelming. That all means I have literally no time at all for writing, and I really miss it! But I do have a small buffer built up, so I thought I might as well drop something just to prove I'm still alive!
> 
> Love as always,  
> WSQ


	16. Chapter 16

Mike thrust his hands deeper into his jean pockets, his shoulders hunching. Ahead of him, Nancy had her hand on Lucas’s shoulder, talking in low voices. He was trying to convince himself it was about Max.

Trying, not succeeding.

Mike swung a hefty kick at a Cola can on the verge, sending it arching through the air and into somebody’s flower bed. He then looked back at the two ahead of him. If they’d heard it, they weren’t letting on.

So much for all of this being over. The universe just couldn’t leave them be. Not for _one minute_. It just made his blood boil.

A sort of shuffling noise caught his ears, and Mike span around, staring back down the road.

At first, he could have forgiven himself for thinking that nothing was there. His eyes glossed over the scene – the one road in a million identical roads, the houses lined up on either side, the gaggle of parked cars. Except, all this fighting the unknown had left him with a sort of ability, a kind of perception for spotting the un-spottable.

And Mike could clearly pick out the shoes lingering behind the closest parked car. Slowly, slowly, he crept towards them, his head tilted, brow furrowed.

“Hello?”

A face appeared for a split second, a flash of pale skin, and then the figure was up and running.

“Hey!” Mike couldn’t help himself – before he knew it, he was sprinting too, long strides eating up the tarmac beneath his pounding feet.

The figure – a boy, he was sure – dashed around a corner, and Mike, head down, was close behind him. When he rounded the corner, however, he stopped dead. The street was empty.

There was only a moment’s breather before the sharp slam of metal on wood snatched his attention, and his head whipped around to the sight of a side gate bouncing on its hinges. Mike set his jaw, closed the distance, and threw the flimsy wood back against the wall with an almighty boom.

There was no need to guess who he’d find around the corner.

“Troy.”

The gate opened onto a path that lead around the side of the house and into a neglected garden, grass beginning to engulf the edge of the paving slabs. There on the patio, the boy looked up from his restless pacing, freezing on the spot, eyes wide beneath a wave of floppy brown hair.

Mike bared his teeth. “What the hell are you doing spying on us?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Oh!” Mike barked out a strangled laugh, storming towards the other boy. “Of course! God forbid anybody hear you talking to Mike ‘Frogface’ Wheeler-”

With a sudden jolt of unexpected force, Troy launched himself at Mike, forcing him back until his head connected painfully with the back wall of the house. Knuckles dug into his collar bones, and even on tip-toes, Troy had a frighteningly strong grip.

“I’m telling you,” the bully hissed, “Shut up, or they’ll hear you.”

Mike blinked, once, twice. His fingernails dug into the brickwork. He could feel Troy’s breath on his face.

Finally, the hands retreated from his collar, and he slouched down against the bricks, watching shakily as the other boy retreated, hands in his hair.

“Who… who is ‘them’?”

Troy glanced at him guiltily.

When he failed to answer, Mike pushed up from the wall. “They were here, weren’t they? Nancy saw a van on your driveway-”

“That’s my dad’s van.”

“Your dad is one of the Bad Men?”

Troy frowned, half amused. “The what?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Mike muttered, glancing away.

“’ _Bad Men’_? Is that what you call them?” Troy snorted. “You know my mum’s one of them, too? She’s not a man.”

Mike bristled, embarrassment turning to anger, surging up his throat. “You told them, didn’t you?”

The smirk disappeared from Troy’s eyes.

Mike’s lip curled in disbelief. “Do you have _any idea_ what they do to her? Do you have any idea how fucked up she was when she got away from them the first time?”

“No, I-”

“No, you _don’t_ , because you don’t care about anything!”

“You know what? I _don’t_ care.” Troy fixed him with a desperate glare. “I don’t care. Not about her, not about you. You know what I care about? I wanted to see your stupid face! I just wanted you to know how it feels to have everything ripped out from under you!

“You wanna know why I haven’t been at school lately, Wheeler? It’s cos people forget when you fall on your face during basketball. People forget when you’re the only one who dresses up for Halloween. But if you pee yourself in front of the whole school? Nobody ever forgets! Nobody!”

Mike bit his lip.

“Your girlfriend’s stunt cost me the only friend I ever had. And I wanted to see your face when I did the same to you.”

Troy folded his arms across his chest, staring at his feet, his face reddening.

For a long time, Mike was silent, chewing his lip. His chest ached with unspoken fury, and yet, there was just something so oddly vulnerable about the other boy, like blowing on him might knock him over. Problem was, no matter how breakable, what he’d done was just so utterly _stupid_.

“Well, you’ve seen it. Are you happy now?”

“No,” Troy whispered, staring at the ground.

“Then what’s the point of me being here?” It was less a question, more a statement, and Mike wasted no time in spinning on his heel and heading for the gate. He wasn’t learning anything here. It wasn’t getting him closer to El.

He only stopped when the voice behind him muttered words he didn’t know he wanted to hear.

“I saw them take her.”

Mike turned.

“I saw what they did to her. And I saw what happened to Max, too.”

~

At first, she was barely aware of the faint rumble, like it was far, far away. But, slowly, it grew closer and closer, until her floating body was consumed within it. And everything began to shake.

Only then did Max feel the warm, sticky leather pressing into her cheek, a thin layer of drool working its way back from her mouth into her hair. She flushed hot and cold. If her body was still there, she could barely feel it.

Everything seemed to tilt, and with it, the blood began to rush through her veins, her trembling body lighting up as it came back into existence. Her fingers twitched. Her joints were aching, flu-like, and she grew more and more aware of how tightly her legs were curled against her.

When Max finally summoned the strength to open her eyes, everything seemed blurry and close, and it took a few long, slow blinks to clear the frost from the corners of her eyes. At first, the sea of tan made no sense to her, until she finally reached out and found the back pocket of a car seat, dangled her arms into a footwell filled with trash.

The smell of cologne was as breathtakingly strong as it was oddly recognisable. Not Billy – she’d know him in a heartbeat. Someone else, someone close, someone familiar…

Steve.

Max bolted up. At least, she tried to, but her limbs felt like they were made of lead, and her cheek was firmly glued to the backseat. All she managed was a weak jolt that did nothing more than turn her body slightly and further tangle her legs.

Gathering herself for a second attempt, she tucked her hands underneath her and slowly, agonisingly heaved herself upright.

Not that it did her much good. She was so dizzy, the road outside the window was already blurring at the edges, and the gentle curves tugged her sideways like a boat pitching in a storm. Blinking hard, Max forced her brain to receive information – that she was moving at speed, that the passenger seat was empty, that Steve Harrington’s hair was taking up a ridiculous amount of the driver’s side.

“Max?”

God, even his voice sounded weird. It took her a moment to find his piercing eyes in the rear-view.

“You alright?”

Max was sure she spoke, but all she heard from her own lips was an incoherent mumble.

Steve’s eyes widened. “Hey, listen, you’re alright. You’re fine. We’re fine. Ok?” He took a breath that definitely wasn’t fine. “I don’t know what the hell they drugged you with but it looks like strong stuff.”

 _I’ll say_.

“Where… are we?” At least that was coherent.

“We’re… uh, we’re just… You know what? Maybe you should lie down. Try to sleep it off.”

She wanted to argue, so, so badly. But another curve in the road had her pitching violently towards the window, and before she knew it, she was on her face again, and this time, she didn’t have the strength to pick herself up.

“Max…?”

She closed her eyes.

~

“Mike!”

Nancy held her hands up to her mouth like the extra volume was really gonna help. Because if she was being honest with herself, if she really knew her brother, she knew there was no way he’d show up unless he wanted to.

Which she was damn sure he didn’t.

Turning, she locked eyes with Lucas, who shrugged helplessly. They’d been up and down the road so many times that Nancy was beginning to feel her feet numbing, and her voice was really beginning to crack. There wasn’t much more they could do, save for sit back and wait for Mike to show up on his own.

“Don’t worry. He’ll come back. He always does.”

Comforted by one of her brother’s weird, prepubescent friends. Life didn’t get much better.

“So, what, we just wait?” Nancy couldn’t bite her tongue any longer. “Honestly? He was the one who wouldn’t shut up about wasting time! How does he expect us to find El when we’re busy chasing after him? Of all the arrogant, self-rightous-”

The sound of someone clearing their throat froze her mid-sentence. In fact, she had been so caught up, she’d been totally ignoring Lucas’s pointed looks over her shoulder.

Nancy turned.

“…Mike?”

He was standing right behind her. Because of course he was.

“But… I… where have you-”

“We gotta go back to the others. Right now.”

Nancy just stared at him blankly. She’d been expecting a whole lot of things – a cold, hard glare; a sharp, witty comment; even a nasty comeback. Not this weird, renewed energy.

Mike raised his eyebrows at her. “ _Right now._ ”

Her brother turned to run, and Lucas whizzed past her shoulder, leaving Nancy only a moment to gather herself before she pelted off in hot pursuit.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back, babbee...
> 
> So basically, my life turned into a bit of a whirlwid for a while there, and I was struggling with the pace of the next few chapters, but on re-reading, I realised the pace wasn't the problem - it felt slow 'cos I was WRITING slow. And that's 'cos I've now got two jobs on the go and a ton of stuff on the side. Whoops.  
> Nevertheless, I've rearranged these chapters, reordered and trimmed them down, and now, get ready for a spooky halloween week of uploads, 'cos with any luck, I've got enough for an upload every day! 
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with me. I really appreciate every view, kudos and comment. You're all amazing.
> 
> WSQ


	17. Chapter 17

Max’s eyes flickered open once again, this time into a sea of red hair. Her lips parted, releasing a groan more of annoyance than of pain. It felt like a truck had driven over her, then slammed it in reverse and come back for round two.

The worst hangover ever. Not that she knew what that was like. Not at all.

“Hey, welcome back to the land of the living.”

When she brushed her hair back and squinted into the rear view, she found Steve’s concerned gaze radiating over her. Great. Max dropped her head back down like that was somehow going to help.

“Feeling any better?”

“What the fuck do you think?”

“Hey, language.”

Max slowly managed to turn herself so she could stare at the car’s roof. Whatever snarky answer she had given, Steve’s question lingered. _Feeling any better?_ She chewed her lips as she thought about it. _Depends on which part of me you ask._

Her head was clearer, sure, but it hammered with a headache that pierced through her temples. Her legs were cramping up from lying on the back seat and there was a sick feeling growing in her stomach. The kind of feeling that made you wanna puke just to get rid of it. And the swaying of the car wasn’t helping.

Max heaved herself upright. There was no way she was going to puke in front of Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington. For a start, if Billy ever found out, it was curtains for her reputation.

Still, even watching the trees roll by outside the window as the road twisted and turned didn’t seem to help. God, she hadn’t been car-sick since she was six.

Planting a hand on either headrest, Max jerked forward and clambered over the centre console, making sure to kick Steve (“by accident”) in the process.

The car swerved slightly. “Hey- whoa! Whoa! What are you doing?”

She flopped into the passenger seat and folded her arms. “You think I’m gonna stay in the back like some toddler?”

“You can’t just do that. I’m driving!” When Max just shrugged, sliding deeper into the seat, Steve had to relent. “At least put your seatbelt on.”

Staring into the woods flying by outside the window, it occurred to her that she didn’t recognise this road. Maybe six months ago, that wouldn’t have been unusual, but driving around with Billy had given her a pretty good mental map of Hawkins. And that begged the question…

“Where are we?”

She heard Steve’s hair brushing against the headrest as he glanced at her. “Just past Fairmount.”

Max’s eyes flew open. “What?!”

“Well, I couldn’t leave you behind!”

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” Her mental map didn’t stretch that far, but she’d seen enough real maps to know they were miles from where she hoped they’d be. “So you kidnap kids now?”

“Wha- no!”

“Then where the hell are we even going?”

“Where do you think? We’re going after El!”

 _El._ The name had Max’s words dying on her tongue. Her stomach clenched, and she reached over to crack a window.

Steve gestured out of the windscreen. “I’ve been tailing this idiot’s van for like twenty miles now. Dickheads don’t even know I’m still here.”

Sure enough, the blue and white van appeared as they turned a corner, just long enough to catch a glimpse before it disappeared into the trees. Pulling around the next bend, they snatched a good look. The van was hardly white any more, smeared with dirt and dust, but it was undoubtedly the one. Max pursed her lips as they image replayed in her head: the van mounting the curb; the sharp needle in her neck; El’s sharp scream.

As she watched, the back of the van seemed to split into two.

“…Pull over.”

Steve’s eyes bulged. “What?”

Max screwed her eyes shut. “Pull. Over.”

“We can’t pull over, we’ll lose them-”

Max grabbed his sleeve in a deathly grip, tugging him towards her, eyes alight and scorching. “Unless you want a footwell full of puke, you better _pull the damn car over!_ ”

As if of its own volition, the Beemer jerked towards the curb, and before it had even stopped, the door was open, and Max was stumbling out onto the verge.

There was only one thought on her mind as she staggered into the crash barrier, even as her stomach sent an icy surge up her throat.

_You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me._

~

“Son of a bitch, where are they?”

Will slouched at the foot of the sofa, his eyes lazily following Dustin’s pacing. “Maybe they found something?”

“Then why haven’t they called?”

“Hey, relax, okay?” Jonathan piped up from the kitchen, a packet of cereal bars clasped in his hand.

As Dustin snorted angrily, Will found himself fixating on the box, his own stomach growling emptily. He checked the clock. Quarter to two.

His mum had left for the 7-Eleven nearly two hours ago.

The revelation had him sitting bolt upright. In fact, it turned his blood so cold, it made him shiver, and he could just about feel the colour draining out of his face.

Dustin caught him out of the corner of his eyes. “Hey, Will, you okay?”

Will found Jonathan’s gaze. “Where’s mum?”

Jonathan’s eyes grew wide as he, too, glanced at the clock.

The walkie found it’s way back up to Dustin’s lips. “Guys, this is Dustin. Has anyone seen Mrs. Byers, over?”

~

Joyce’s car screeched around a corner, haring up the road, bits and pieces of tree flying up from the bumper and curling into the air in its wake. It seemed wrong. Totally wrong. Entirely the wrong part of town, miles away from where…

From where he should be.

But Billy hadn’t been lying. There was no way. He didn’t even know that Hopper was missing, let alone about the monster. For all the rest of the town knew, the Chief was in bed with a nasty bug.

So how would he know to lie?

Halfway up the road, Joyce twisted the wheel, breaking hard as the car leapt up onto the verge and came to a messy halt. From there, she swung her door open, scrambled to her feet and searched. Her eyes bored into every piece of scenery – every log, every tree, every inch of the leaf-strewn forest floor.

_“A couple people got drunk up the hill above Danford Creek, swore blind they saw some weird man wandering around in the bushes.”_

Joyce staggered away from the road, a single name on her lips.

“ _Hopper!_ ”

~

 

It took ages to stop, the aftershocks rippling through Max’s muscles even though there was nothing left to come out. She slouched against the cold, hard metal, one hand scrubbing at the slime on her chin, the other pressed into her aching ribs.

Only then did she become aware of an unhappy shuffling in the gravel beside her.

“Hey. You okay down there?” Steve slipped his hands into his pockets and perched on the edge of the metal barrier.

She scowled. “Never better.” _God_ , her voice was hoarse.

He smirked. “It’s fine, you know. That’s nothing. You wait till you get to your first house party.”

Max must have pulled a face, ‘cos next thing she knew, he had slipped down and was sitting beside her, his back to the barrier. She wrapped her arms around her middle. So much for privacy.

“Seriously, you should see Tommy and Carol after a heavy night. You can still smell the booze in their-”

Max groaned, head falling back against the barrier. “You’re not helping.”

“Sorry.”

When she peeked from the corner of her eye, she caught Steve staring at his hands, knitting his fingers together like he wanted them never to untangle.

“The hell’s wrong with you?” she croaked.

“We’re turning back.”

Max blinked. “You’re telling me we came all this way-”

Steve turned to glare, his eyes intense. “I should never have brought you out here, okay? I should’a just taken you home.” He bit his tongue for a moment, then sighed.

Whether it was the shock, or the air, or what, she didn’t know, but she suddenly didn’t feel sick anymore. Instead, she looked him up and down. “So… you’re just giving up on El?”

He frowned unhappily, then gave a joking, half-hearted shrug. “Don’t tell Mike.”

Clambering to her feet, her weight on the metal barrier, she carefully tested her balance. The longer they spent out here in the cold forest air, the less everything was moving. Maybe throwing up had actually helped.

Steve was up too, his hands out in front of him like he was trying to tame some wild animal. “Hey, hey. Take it easy.” His eyes never left her.

“You can’t just give up on her.”

“…what?”

“You’re tryna tell me your fancy-pants car can’t catch up with a beaten up old van?”

Steve snorted indignantly. “No, I’m tryna keep you from throwing up again.”

Max rolled her eyes. “Come on, Steve. We’re the closest thing El has to rescue. You really wanna give up now?”

He eyed her warily. “You really think you can handle it?”

She took a breath, eyeing the car warily. “Got a bag?”

~

“They should be here by now.”

Will drew his knees closer to his chest, peaking through the fingers that were holding up his head. “Dustin, could you quit pacing? You’re giving me a headache.”

To his credit, Dustin froze, but he wasn’t about to quell his fretting. In fact, the only thing that stopped him as his lips parted again was the sight of something out of the window. Will frowned as his friend froze up, shoulders rising, then made a lunge for the door handle.

“Finally.” The door smashed back against the wall. “Where the hell have you been?”

The next moment, Dustin was staggering backwards as Mike strode straight into him and powered on past. He didn’t even blink.

“Mike, what the hell?” Dustin stared, confused, at his retreating back.

His bewildered gaze turned to Nancy and Lucas, hovering unhappily in the doorway as Jonathan appeared from the kitchen, a dripping tea towel clasped in his white fingers.

Will pushed up from the floor onto the sofa, his eyes fixed on Mike. His friend was lingering in the shadows of the hallway door, his back to them all like he didn’t know where to turn. There was a pale, drawn look in the pinch of his brows that made Will’s heart skip a beat.

In the doorway, Nancy quietly, dreadfully broke the uneasy, expectant silence.

“El’s gone.”

You could’ve heard a cockroach breathe in the frigid living room air.

“Turns out Troy’s mum and dad are with the Bad Men,” Lucas added gravely.

“Son of a bitch. Of course Troy would rat us out.” Dustin curled his fingers up into fists.

Will fixed his wide eyes on Lucas. “What about Max?”

“She’s with Steve,” came a low voice from the corner. Mike fell against the wall, arms folded, his face half-hidden behind the shadow of his hair.

Jonathan frowned. “Steve?”

“Yeah,” Nancy nodded. “From what Troy told Mike, they went after El.”

Will felt an odd coldness creeping up his spine. So odd, in fact, he didn’t notice the movement in his peripheral vision until the sofa gave a loud thump and Mike dropped into the seat next to him.

“It’s not fair,” the boy moaned, his fingers stretched up and buried themselves in his hair. Will’s lips parted, but quickly shut again. What was there to say? All he could do was reach up a comforting hand and place it between his shoulder blades.

Across the room, Jonathan closed the distance between himself and his girlfriend and wrapped Nancy in a tight hug, and Lucas and Dustin gave each other weak, consolidatory glances.

Will couldn’t stand it. When did they all become so hopeless?

“So what do we do?”

Mike lifted his head just enough to meet his eyes. “What?”

“I said, what do we do? I mean, there’s no way we’re just gonna sit here, right?”

It was like his words were warm water lapping at an ice cube. Something stirred within Mike’s eyes, that deep-seated determination, that unbreakable loyalty, that never-say-die attitude that made him who he was. The boy who jumped off a cliff to save Dustin. The boy who never gave up on finding his missing friend. The boy who kept calling El, every day for 353 days.

Mike’s eyes were alight. “Jonathan. Do you have an area map?”

Will’s brother perked up. “What area?”

“Troy said his parents work somewhere halfway between here and Indianapolis.”

“I’ll see what I’ve got.”

As he hurried off, Nancy, Dustin and Lucas rushed to the other side of the coffee table and Mike and Will pushed off the sofa and onto their knees.

“What are we looking for?” Nancy’s gaze met her brother’s.

Mike bit his lip thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. Military establishments. Roads that go nowhere. Anomalies.”

With a cacophony of paper, a map unfurled above their heads and came to rest between them. As Will watched, Mike’s eyes raced hungrily over the scruffy, faded lines.

Jonathan took a knee beside him. “This okay?”

Mike took a moment, then curtly nodded. “Everyone pick an area. We haven’t got much time.”

~

An hour seemed to have blinked by in a heartbeat, and Joyce was by no means any closer to finding Hopper. She’d scoured every inch of the hillside and followed the Creek all the way down and back, but nothing had appeared. Her calls were answered by cruel, cold silence and the thin cry of a hawk circling overhead.

Joyce stood and stared out across the shallow water. What else could she do? Her once red converse were now died almost black with mud water and her hair braided with pieces of tree.

And now, the sick feeling of dread was rising in her chest, not just for her friend, but her children, too. There was nothing at all to suggest anything was wrong. No monster screams, no strange power surge, no flotilla of government vehicles. And yet…

She’d been away too long.

~

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's it is. These next few chapters aren't particularly dynamic in terms of fights and action, but bear with them, 'cos they're important to the plot! And also angsty in places. 
> 
> Just trust me on this one.
> 
> WSQ


	18. Chapter 18

 “This is impossible.” Dustin huffed, his fingers tangled in his hair. “There’s nothing!”

Jonathan sat back uneasily. “I mean, it does make sense. If it’s a secret base, why would they put it on a map?”

Will squeezed his eyes tight shut, pressing the heels of his hands into them as though he could erase the contour lines etched behind them. His area of the map was an endless expense of nothing, and staring at it made his eyes dry and itchy.

Around him, the others were leaning back and looking between each other, as though someone in the circle would have the answer printed on a t-shirt or something. Mike, however, wasn’t deterred, going over each square of the map with precise detail, his finger running along the page, following on.

“There has to be something we’re missing…” he hissed.

Will stretched out a hand and wrapped his fingers around Mike’s wrist. “We’re losing too much time here.”

The other boy sat up like he was going to start an argument, but there just wasn’t enough wind in his sails. Instead, he only hunched over, staring, narrow-eyed, at the piteous looks surrounding him.

“So, what, then? We can’t just sit here doing nothing.”

“Go.”

The word was so simple, but Mike’s head whipped around so sharply, part of Will flinched in case it flew off his shoulders.

“What?”

“Go after her,” Will continued, a little quieter. “If Jonathan drives, we can stay here and keep searching.”

Jonathan’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “I mean… yeah. I could.”

“I’ll come with you,” Nancy quickly put in, already halfway to her feet.

Mike looked back to Will, brighter now, beginning to glow. “You sure you’ll be okay here?”

Before he could say anything, Dustin cut him off with a snort. “Come on, Mike. It’s not like he’s gonna be alone. Right, Lucas?”

When nudged, Lucas nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. Yeah! If we find anything, we’ll let you know.”

Mike looked between them one last time, drinking in their faces like he wasn’t coming back. Then, with a frown of determination, he pushed himself to his feet. Running backwards towards the door, he waved the Super-Comm at them.

“Remember, call me if you find anything!”

Nancy was quick to herd her brother out of the door, Jonathan’s keys jangling as he snatched them off the hook, and then the door swung shut behind them. Will, Dustin and Lucas stood together, shoulder to shoulder, watching through the window as the car engine roared, the lights flashed on, and their friends disappeared in a crunch of rubber on gravel.

For a long time, none of them moved. Then, slowly, Dustin turned and looked at his friends.

“Anyone got a magnifying glass?”

~

Steve’s brow furrowed. He’d been driving hard for a good half hour now, but they had yet to catch up with the van again. Somehow, it seemed to have just disappeared off the face of the planet. Maybe before everything started, he wouldn’t have believed that was possible, but now? Now he didn’t know what he could believe.

He glanced to the passenger seat. Max was asleep again, her head resting against the window ( _Great. There’s another grease mark to polish off_ ), the MacDonald’s bag he’d given her crumpled in her lap. Her face was a picture of calm, if a little grey. At least she hadn’t thrown up again.

 _Honk!_ A sharp sound brought his eyes sharply back to the road, and he swerved back over the white line just in time to avoid an oncoming artic.

_Shit. I’ve been driving too long._

Sadly, the sound had done exactly what he was afraid it would do. A pair of sharp green eyes burned into the side of his face.

“What the hell was that?”

Steve kept his eyes firmly on the road. “Uh… nothing.”

Max bristled. She didn’t give up easily. “Are you even fit to be driving this thing?”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?”

The seat creaked as she slouched back into it, unconvinced. “If you crash this car, you’re dead.”

Steve frowned. _Well, yeah, why wouldn’t I be?_

Then again, his eyes _were_ beginning to pop out of his skull, and he probably _could_ go for a coffee. And a piss. Maybe he shoulda thought of that when he pulled over the first time.

And then, of course, there was Max. She wasn’t gonna complain, but there was no way she wasn’t feeling pretty rough still, and he knew first-hand what your mouth ended up tasting like when you fell asleep after being sick.

“You know, there’s a gas station just up this way. If you wanna, you know… get anything. Stretch your legs, maybe. I dunno.”

Max huffed an exhausted sigh.

~

It was just after their second fruitless call to Mike that Will began to notice it.

When Dustin spoke into the Super-Comm, his voice sounded just as strangely far away as Mike’s reply, and when he quickly looked up, Will was alarmed to find an odd mist lying around the room. Rubbing at his eyes, he studied his friend’s faces, but found no worry in their gazes. Lucas picked at a stray thread on his jacket sleeve. Dustin chewed his lip. But neither one of them gave any indication that they could see anything.

Will shuddered as, behind his friends, something moved. A flash, like a car’s headlights as it turned. A sharp, cold shard lodged itself between his ribs, and he tipped away from the coffee table, falling back against the sofa.

_Not again._

There, once again, it twisted. A form in the mist, like a ghost, but getting closer. Louder. Sharper. The air was draining from his lungs. He could _feel_ her, her fear, her struggling – screaming – _screaming –_

“Will?”

His eyes flashed to Lucas’s concerned gaze, and only then did he feel the cold sweat gathering down his spine.

“Will! What is it?”

She couldn’t know. _They_ couldn’t know. Because if they knew, what would they think?

Will sucked in a breath, his brow hardening. “I… have to go to the bathroom.”

And then, with all the strength he could muster, he tore his eyes from the ghostly shape, tore his mind from where it melded with hers, and forced himself to his feet, staggering for the sanctuary of a lockable door.

In his wake, Lucas and Dustin could only look at one another, tight-lipped and tense.

~

Rain was beginning to lash down in droves, sending sheets of white water ghosting between the trees. The wipers lashed across the screen, never quite clearing the torrent as Joyce sped through the trees. Nevertheless, the speedo was tipping 45.

 As she skidded around another bend, a pair of headlights momentarily blinded her. She slammed on the brakes, just in case, but even through the rain, she could tell it wasn’t white and blue. More of a rusty brown.

As it tore past, faster even than her, Joyce found herself staring at the taillights in her rear-view. If she didn’t know any better, she could almost swear it was Jonathan, but he wouldn’t leave his little brother. Not ever. Unless…

Biting her lip, she stepped on the gas.

~

“…D’you think he’s okay?”

Dustin turned to look at a fidgeting Lucas with a gaze that dripped with irritation. “Yeah, Lucas, I’m sure he’s totally fine. Why else would he lock himself in the bathroom for _fifteen minutes_?”

The weak light from the living room barely reached where they stood, lingering outside the bathroom door, but even so, he watched as Lucas’s head dropped, and he scuffed his toe along the hallway carpet. “Think we should check it’s actually locked?”

The other boy rolled his eyes, then leaned forwards and knocked on the scruffy painted wood. “Hey, Will, you okay in there?”

There was no response.

“He’s ignoring us,” Lucas muttered sagely.

“Yeah, no shit, dumbass.”

“Ugh.” He wrinkled his nose. “You gotta stop hanging out with Steve, you’re starting to sound like him.”

Dustin knocked again. “Will! Open up!”

The silence was killing, and Lucas’s expression grew panicked. “He’s passed out. I bet he’s passed out.”

“No way-”

“It’s just like last time! Like at school! We gotta go in there and help him!”

“Lucas-”

“That’s it, I’m breaking the door down.”

As Lucas went to throw a kick at the door, Dustin snatched hold of him. “Hey, whoa, whoa! You can’t just barge in!”

“Why not?”

“’Cos what if he’s got his pants down or something!”

“Well, so what?”

“‘So what’?!”

“I’m just sayin’, if I had my pants down, I’d still rather not die.”

Dustin glared for a second, before shaking his head. “You’re an idiot. An actual idiot.”

A bump from the other side of the door had them suddenly frozen, and in the quiet, they could clearly hear Will’s frantic breathing, his little chokes of pain. The two of them looked at one another, slack-jawed and somber. It was all too familiar by now. And all too unfair.

Dustin was the first to move, creeping closer to the door, placing the flat of his palm against the cold, glossed wood. “Hey, Will? We… we know you’re in there. We know something bad is going on.”

Lucas watched hawkishly, trying to figure his own place in this, perhaps deciding that he couldn’t find one. He could only observe as his friend slid down the wall and crossed his legs beneath him on the carpet.

“You don’t have to come out,” Dustin said slowly. “But… we want to help.”

“You can’t.” A voice weakly croaked.

Lucas bit his lip. Hard. It didn’t even sound like Will anymore. He looked to Dustin, watched a strange, intelligent expression flicker across his face and then seep away again.

“It’s El, isn’t it?”

No response. Dustin gulped.

“You keep seeing her. Talking to her, inside your mind. Right?” For a moment, his eyebrows creased, doubt flickering through his chest. “…right?”

But the answer quietly came. “Yes…”

Though Lucas looked incredulous, he didn’t have the chance to interject, because the next moment, the door handle twisted and it cracked open, ever so slightly. In the vague darkness, Dustin could just about make out the outline of a body, the shine of a damp eye.

“How do you know that?”

Dustin cracked a wry smile, his gaze flitting between his two friends. “I mean, it was kinda obvious.”

“Speak for yourself,” Lucas muttered.

Will’s eye flashed downwards, and Dustin quickly put a hand out before he could close to door again. “Hey, hey! It’s cool! I mean, True Sight _and_ Telepathy? You’re levelling up.”

“It’s… not like that.” Even though Will’s tone didn’t change, he was sure he saw a slight smirk turn the corner of the boy’s mouth, just for a moment.

Dustin leaned forward in spite of himself, over-eager. “Then… what is it like?”

~

 _Great_. Could they have picked a better time to go radio silent? Mike curled his fingers around the casing of his Supercomm, staring out of the window as the buildings turned to trees. Another ten minutes and they would be out of range.

He couldn’t help but worry, though. For a start, Dustin had that stupid headset that he wore everywhere, so it wasn’t like he could actively go away from the radio. And none of them would voluntarily ignore him. At least, not at a time like this. No, it left only one possibility. One that made Mike’s blood go cold.

He hadn’t missed the pinch in Will’s brow, or the hollowness in his cheeks. Nor could he ignore the fact that his hands couldn’t stop shaking, no matter how long he’d sat on them. No, as much as he didn’t like it (and he _really_ didn’t like it) there was a distinct possibility that, once again, there was something seriously wrong with Will.

Mike grabbed the headrests and hauled himself forward, thrusting his chin out between where Jonathan and Nancy were sitting in solemn silence.

“Jonathan, would you slow down? Sheesh.”

“Slow down?!” Nancy’s head whipped around. “Are you crazy? I thought you wanted to help El!”

“Yeah, well, we’re going out of range. How can we help her if we don’t even know where she is?”

Neither one of them had an answer for that. Mike fell back against the seat, slumping down until he could barely see out of the window. Maybe that way, he could pretend the call would come at any minute. That they’d have directions, that Will would be fine. Maybe he could pretend they still had a hope of finding her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again guys! Here I am with the next installment for halloween week! If you've missed my chapter notes or you're new to the fic, this week I'm uploading one chapter a day every evening from Monday-Friday, since I've been radio silent for at least a month.   
> So, Will's finally plucked up the courage to talk to Dustin and Lucas, huh? Maybe his powers could come in handy... 
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and stay safe if you go out tomorrow night!
> 
> WSQ


	19. Chapter 19

“It’s not like it was before. Not with… with _him_.”

Dustin leaned in, trying to get a better look at the forced, blank expression on Will’s face. He looked so frail, perched on the edge of the sofa cushions, shaking all over, his fingers twisting together. Lucas was on the floor at his feet, eyes fixed on their youngest friend.

With a shaky breath, Will continued. “When I see her…. She’s not like a shadow. Not like a Now-Memory. It’s more like… like seeing a ghost.” His eyes were glazing over, the corners of his mouth pulling down. “I-If I look away, she disappears. But… I can still hear her.”

Dustin stopped himself before he could ask what she was saying. Something in his friend’s eyes told him it wasn’t going to be words.

“You see this all the time?” Lucas whispered, eyebrows disappearing towards his hairline.

Will slowly shook his head. “Not all the time.”

Dustin leaned closer. “That day at school…”

“That was the first time. And then… that day at the lake, when I was in the water, I saw her again. And then again that night, while we were sleeping.”

“Does she know?” Lucas frowned.

Will bit his lip. “I pretended I couldn’t see her. I guess… I guess I was scared she’d be angry. Or, worse, she’d think the Mind Flayer was back.” Then, all of a sudden, a hurt, frightened look flashed across his face. “She… she thinks it’s all in her head, doesn’t she?”

_Oh, shit._

Dustin eyes widened, and he gulped. “She thinks it’s her powers. She must think they’re going wrong.”

“That’s why she ran away,” Lucas nodded sagely.

Will’s hands flew up, cradling his face. “This is all _my_ fault.” His voice cracked with shame. Dustin leaned across, wrapping an arm around him and placing his chin on Will’s shoulder, but the words he longed to say just couldn’t leave his lips. _It’s not your fault_ \- that was just another lie.

Lucas, too, was reaching out, his hand on his friend’s knee, but he suddenly froze. “Wait… if you can speak to her… can you ask her where she is?”

Dustin’s head shot up. “Holy shit, Lucas, you’re a genius.”

As Lucas gave a smirk of false humility, Will peeked from behind his hands. “You… really think she’ll know?”

Dustin threw his hands up. “Isn’t it worth a shot?”

For a second, he stared at his hands, his eyebrows creasing in the middle. Then, with a steadying breath, Will looked between his two friends, and slowly reached out a hand to each one.

Dustin had no qualms about snatching a tight hold of his friend’s fingers – whatever would make this easier. Lucas, however, hesitated. “Does it… hurt?”

Will tucked his lip behind his teeth.

“Goddammit, Lucas, just hold his damn hand!” Dustin snapped.

Finally, palm met palm. With the three boys connected, Will took a long, deep breath – in through the nose, out through the mouth – then his eyelids dropped, eyes losing focus, staring into the nothingness at the other end of the room, at the figure only he could see.

And then, his eyes slid closed.

~

_Falling. That’s what it felt like. Falling, falling, dropping into darkness. The ground rushing up, and then-_

Wherever he was, the sofa didn’t come with him. Will jerked forwards as he fell to his knees, gasping at the shock of cold water spraying up and soaking his clothes. His arms paddled, desperate to find his friends’ hands, the carpet, anything at all familiar, but all he could feel were the ghosts of fingers grasping his chest, his back, pushing him upright.

For a moment, it was like he flickered. A warm breath of living room air, the sudden shock of shouting voices and scrabbling hands. But a moment later, he was back in the cold, the dark.

“Dustin?... Lucas?”

Will trembled at the way his voice echoed into nothingness, like a cave close around him, but the walls were far, far away. It felt… wrong.

 _“Will!”_ Distantly, barely, he made out Dustin’s voice. _“Will, are you okay?”_

There was no way to know if they would even hear him, but he had to try. “…Guys?” His lips felt heavy, frozen, his tongue refusing to cooperate.

 _“Will! What’s going on? Where are you?”_ Lucas, this time.

He swallowed. “I… I don’t know…”

 _“We’re here, Will. We’re here,”_ Dustin said, more of a panicked shout than a comforting murmur. Still, it was something – better than nothing.

Will slowly looked around, taking in the stark blankness of everything around him. A part of him dimly wondered if this was what death was like – sitting in the freezing darkness. He should know, really, but he couldn’t remember what it was like the last time he had died.

Something caught his eye, bright against the black. Plaid. A crumpled plaid shirt, blues and purples, arching up a long spine. Chestnut hair, half-swamped by the enormous collar, tied roughly at the top of the head by a bright, sunshine scrunchie.

A shard of ice settled in his belly.

“Guys… I’ve found her.”

~

Four simple words that juddered through his very heart. _I’ve found her_. Dustin could help but grip Will’s arms a little tighter.

It was so weird, doing this with him. He was almost used to watching El use her powers, floating in water or sitting upright and blindfolded. He could deal with it when it was her voice whimpering words from some places unknown. But there was something so wrong about this. About watching the same things happening to this boy he’d known since fourth grade.

If he and Lucas weren’t grasping his shoulders, Will would be face-first on the floor by now. He wished they could lie him down or something, make it a little easier, but Dustin was afraid to move him. Whatever was happening to him now, he couldn’t break his concentration. El’s life depended on it.

Lucas was staring at him, wide-eyed and bewildered. But neither one of them had anything helpful to say, so they sat in silence, keeping tight hold of the boy between them. The boy who was beginning to shudder.

Sweat was gathering on Will’s pale brow as it furrowed in deep concentration. His lips were twitching, words carefully forming. “El…? Can you hear me…?”

Biting his lip, Dustin tried to ignore the gnawing dread that twisted his stomach into knots. The butterflies within him tightened his chest with a song of _this can’t be good…_

~

El didn’t move. It didn’t matter how close Will’s bare feet crept, it was as if she were frozen; a statue, a frieze. Not one muscle twitched – he wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

He’d seen people meditate in movies. Hands pressed together, legs folded, back straight. That was almost what she looked like, save for one small detail. In the movies, they always had their eyes calmly closed.

El’s eyes were wide open.

Will was right in front of her, but her eyes were firmly fixed somewhere outside this strange, dark place. It didn’t matter how he knelt before her or waved his hand in front of her face – she was a statue. Unblinking, unmoving. That was, until he reached too close, and she twitched.

“El…?” He breathed, hoping against hope that she might give it up already, but she was stubborn. He swallowed. There was a fear in her eyes, buried beneath the layers of tenacious impassivity. A fear he knew had come from him.

“I know you can hear me. And I know you think it isn’t real, but… it is.” Will bit his lip. “I know… you think this is in your head. But this isn’t you. It’s…” He faltered – even he couldn’t quite believe it. “It’s me. I’m doing this.”

What else he could do, he didn’t know. It was all he could think of just to reach out towards her, to the fingers clasped tightly around her folded knees, hoping that the brush of his skin might convince her. But, just as he was about to take her hand, she snatched it swiftly away.

When he looked up, his eyes locked with hers, and the intensity of her gaze threatened to stop his heart.

“You…” The words cracked from her lips like she barely had a voice.

Will slowly nodded. “Yeah… yeah, El, it’s me.”

Her head twitched to the side – sharp, like an animal. She didn’t seem like herself. The El he knew was soft and warm, all smiles and curious, child-like wonder. But this El… she seemed older. Wiser. Sharper. Like something ancient deep inside her was rearing its head.

Her nostrils flared. “You… lied.”

Fear bloomed, unbidden, from his core and spread shivering fingers through him. The fire burning through her was frightening. He’d felt what she could do with her powers. He’d felt every broken bone of a demidog’s body rattle as it was thrown through the air - his connection to the Mind Flayer had made sure of that.

And now, as this new animal El bristled before him, the rage tugging at the tendons in her throat, he was beginning to wonder whether he might be about to feel that rattle again.

“El…”

“You. Lied.” Her finger flashed out of nowhere, jabbing into Will’s chest hard enough to push him back onto his ass. His hands flew up in front of his face, but when he squinted through his fingers, it wasn’t some vicious animal he saw, but a girl so hurt her eyes brimmed with tears.

The next moment, she snatched his hand.

And he felt everything.

_The sting of a needle pressed into his neck._

_A sick dizziness so strong it dragged him in and out of soft, swallowing, choking darkness._

_Rough hands tugging him, carrying him, shoving him._

_Throwing him to the ground of a cold, white cell._

_Fear, and hunger, and a deep longing, painful in his chest._

_And loneliness._

_So much loneliness._

_Because who else could possibly understand?_

El threw his hand away, and suddenly, he was tumbling away into the void, spinning, _spinning-_

~

Will’s gasping reached a fever pitch, and all of a sudden, he jolted forward off the sofa, so that only Dustin and Lucas’s quick arms stopping him from slamming into the coffee table. Instead, he came to rest against the foot of the sofa, crumpled into a pile of heaving, sweaty limbs at their feet.

“Will! Can you hear us?” Lucas cried out.

When that didn’t work, Dustin grabbed his head between his palms and lifted his chin from where it was slumped against his chest. “Will, what’s going on? Hey, Will! Say something, goddammit!”

As the boy’s eyes flickered, slugglishly coming into focus, Lucas crashed onto the floor beside him, concern radiating from his tense face. “Is he ok?”

“I don’t know!”

All of a sudden, Will felt an icy blast wash over his face that froze everything in the room. He slowly tilted his head towards it. The air was different, somehow. It smelled of… outside?

“Will…?”

That high, reedy pitch was unmistakable. All of a sudden, his eyes were sharply focused, and in his periphery, he caught Lucas and Dustin’s heads whipping around to the sound of her shopping bags slamming into the ground. A moment later, her keys went with it, and she was there, racing across the room towards him. The only thing his tired brain could possibly wish for.

“… Mum.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The boi got powers. 
> 
> WSQ


	20. Chapter 20

Still nothing. The ice in the pit of Mike’s stomach was sending sharp shivers all the way through his veins.

Five minutes to signal cut-out.

“This is stupid…” he muttered to himself, chewing his tongue.

Jonathan found his gaze in the rearview. “You know what? For once, I actually agree with you. We’re racing off into the middle of nowhere, and we don’t even know if we’re going the right way!”

Nancy looked up from the passenger footwell, a crease pressed into her forehead. “Jonathan…”

“Come on, Nancy. Don’t tell me you don’t think this is a stupid idea.”

Though she bit her lip, his girlfriend relented. Mike, however, sprang up from his slouch and thrust his head between the headrests once again.

“Well, if you think it’s such a stupid plan, maybe you should take it up with your brother.”

“Oh, I would, except you can’t get your dumb walkie-talkie to work.”

Nancy curtly whipped around, putting a hand between the two boys. “Guys! Seriously?”

Jonathan, however, continued regardless. “Well, how am I supposed to drive somewhere when we don’t even know where it is?”

Nancy frowned for a moment, before raising her worried eyes again. “What if it’s the lab?”

Her words sent a chill through the air that held a moment’s quiet, before Mike raised an arm to point through the windshield.

“Pull in that layby and we’ll find out.”

~

To her credit, Mrs Byers had slipped back in with barely a question, almost like she knew what was happening already. And Dustin couldn’t help but notice the mud tracked all the way up the legs of her jeans, the squelch when she walked in her sodden shoes. Some shopping trip.

It was like she’d forgotten everything just as soon as she’d seen the state Will was in, swooping in and gathering him up in her arms, and there she stayed, clutching him to her chest like he was going to be ripped away. Will himself was beginning to get his colour back, though he still looked seriously shaken.

How Mrs Byers hadn’t totally freaked out when they’d explained everything to her, he’d never know. Instead, she’d gone into a deep, dark silence that was ruling over the room, only interrupted by the sharp lashing of the rain outside.

 “The lab.” She suddenly said.

Lucas’s head snapped around. “What?”

“She’s at the lab, right?” Mrs Byers cast an involuntary glance out the window, as if she might find the flashing red marker lights out there in the grey sheets.

“Wh-… no. No! They aren’t that stupid,” Dustin snorted. “There’s no way.”

Lucas nodded his own encouragement. “Besides, Troy said his parents worked out towards Indianapolis.”

Quite suddenly, Will snatched Dustin’s arm. “Hey!... Do you hear that?”

Sure enough, somewhere beneath the hush of endless water, they could hear the faintest of buzzing. As they listened, it morphed from white noise into the loose shape of garbled words.

Lucas frowned. “Is that your headset?”

Dustin shook his head. “No way, I turned it off.”

“You _turned it off?!_ ”

“Well, yeah I didn’t want it to interrupt-”

“Who cares?! Turn it back on!”

Fumbling fingers hurriedly readjusted the headset and tuned the walkie, and all of a sudden, Mike’s voice burst forth.

_“Dustin! Do you copy? This is Mike. Pick up. Over.”_

That was a voice that had repeated that phrase a million times already. Dustin winced as he pulled the microphone down from where it rested above the peak of his cap. “This is Dustin. I copy, over.”

_“Are you kidding me? Where the hell have you been? Over.”_

“Uh… We… hit a snag. Over.”

_“Well, have you found it?”_

“Uhm…”

_“Have. You found. The location. Over.”_

“Well, uh… not exactly.”

Lucas turned from the conversation to Will, still cowering on the sofa, arms around his knees. “You’re gonna have to go back in.”

“No.” Will growled, with enough force that his friends and his mum did a double-take. At that, he relented, head hanging miserably towards his lap. “She doesn’t wanna talk.”

“Will, sweetie…” Mrs Byers sighed heavily, looking older than she ever had as she took a knee in front of him. “We need to know where she is.”

“She doesn’t want to talk,” he repeated softly.

Joyce pouted her lips in that certain encouraging way that made everything seem brighter, that she always used when she tried to make light of things. “Well… you’re going to have to make her then, aren’t you?”

Will grimaced. He wanted to. He really did. But… “You… don’t know what it’s like in there, mum. It’s… it’s dark, and cold. Worse than my Now Memories. Worse than the Upside Down.”

His mum’s lips parted as she hummed unhappily. “I know, I know…” Then, ever-so-gently, she reached towards him and brushed his fringe back out of his eyes. “I know you don’t want to, honey, but we’ll be here the whole time...”

With an unusual buzz, Mike was back. _“We’ve checked the lab. There’s nothing. No lights, no nothing. Which mean…zzt… where we’re going… Over.”_

Dustin pulled a face. “Uh, Mike? You’re breaking up.”

Sure enough, Mike’s reply was garbled at best. Though he slammed the heel of his hand into the radio a couple of times, nothing seemed to help, and he looked up desperately at the rest of the group.

“They’re going out of range. We need that location, fast.”

~

He hated everything about this weird world of darkness, but most of all, he hated that awful feeling of cold water pouring over the tops of his trainers. It was that one thing that made everything so, so much worse.

Will span a slow circle on his heel, scanning the blackness for any sign of life. Though he could see nothing, he knew she was here. He could feel her, like a warm fuzz somewhere on the edge of his consciousness. A ghosting smell of her washing powder, a passing whisper of her breath.

“El?”

His wavering shout petered into nothingness around him. Will balled his hands into fists. Could she have chosen a worse time to play hide and seek?

“El! I know you’re there!” His voice was stronger this time. “I need to talk to you!”

Still nothing but a breath of cold air. Will gulped.

“Please?”

The warmth behind his eyes began to shift, growing stronger, and suddenly, Will became aware of a quiet noise, like it had been there all along, but he hadn’t noticed it. A soft, breathy sound of… weeping.

When he was doing his story writing homework, or even writing a campaign, he never really used that word. _Weeping_. It sounded too quiet, too flaccid, like it was never quite enough. This time, though, it was the closest thing he could think of to describe the pitiful, stifled sound.

Will turned, and there she was. Sitting, slumped, head bowed forward, with a hand pressed to her face to stifle the sound of her crying. And then, as she looked up, he felt a pain glimmer through his chest at those old, sad eyes.

“…El?”

At the sound of his voice, she hardened, shoulders hunching and eyebrows knitting. Will faltered, stammering some garbled nonsense. What was he supposed to say?

_“Will?”_

His mum’s voice drifted to him like in a dream.

_“Tell her we’re coming for her.”_

“El… we’re… we’re coming for you. Mike and Jonathan… and Nancy, and Steve and Max…”

_“But we need to know where she is.”_

“B-But we need to know… we need to know where you are.”

El’s eyes flickered for a moment, her shallow breath wavering in the quiet. Then, her lips finally parted.

“I… don’t know.”

Will gulped. He should’ve seen this coming. El knew next to nothing about anywhere outside Hawkins. And, besides, if she was drugged, she wouldn’t have even been conscious. A deep hollowness settled in his chest as he watched El’s face crumple, head hanging brokenly, her only hopes of rescue sharply dashed.

He scuffed the toe of his trainer, hands twisting the hem of his shirt as he began to turn from her. What was he supposed to do now?

“Well… we’ll keep searching the map. I’m sure we’ll find something.”

She didn’t look at him. Clearly, he didn’t convince her.

“I guess I should go back and help.”

Her eyes met his, brimming with tears just as his were.

“Will…” She breathed, barely more than a whisper. “I’m… scared.”

He froze for a moment, unable to speak. Then, like a gust of wind, Will spun back, dropping to his knees in the strange wetness and holding her expectant gaze. “Then… I’ll stay. Okay? I’ll stay with you.”

The ghost of a smile flickered at the corner of her lips, and, very slowly, her fingers began to crawl towards his, until they slipped into his hand, cold, so cold, and trembling. He felt for her, alone, miles away, in a cold, blank cell. However mad she might have been with him before, she was still willing to put that all aside just to reach out and touch him. Just to feel like someone was there, even if it was just him.

And, for once, Will didn’t mind being a last resort.

There was a shimmering of bright yellow light at the corner of his focus, and as he turned, he was baffled to find, not far away, the hazy image of a gas station illuminating the dark. Looking back at El, he saw her staring too, the glow picking out the sharpness that was growing under her cheekbones.

There was something about it. Will turned back, studying the awning, the little shop nestled at the back behind the pumps.

“I… I know that gas station. It’s just out on the interstate, towards…”

El’s gaze flashed back to him, and he met it with a quickening breath.

“Did you see this?”

Her chin dipped in silent accord.

“Was there anything else? Anything at all?”

El’s head swivelled, and the images began to change, neon lights giving way to soft daylight, clouds full of thunder lying over hills thick with pine trees. Then, slowly, a bridge came into view, impossibly tall over a deep, deep valley, with tree-trunk legs forming arches underneath it. At its feet, the waters of the Eno crashed into the concrete, a torrent that looked strong enough to sweep the supports away.

Will gasped, which once again snatched El’s attention. His heart hammered against his chest.

“How far are you from here? Do you remember?”

El’s brows knitted. “…No.”

“Do you remember the outside of the building?”

“No.”

Will bit his lip. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was all they had. “I have to tell the others.”

The image disappeared the way the TV screen went blank when you pulled the plug. Will frowned, only for his face to drop again at El’s expression.

“Don’t go,” she groaned.

“I have to. I need to tell them.”

Her fingers closed around his. “Please…”

“I’m sorry, El. I’ll come back, I promise.”

“No.”

Will tried to stand, but her grip was too tight, her lips twisted in a desperation he wished he could fix. But there was only one way to do that.

He ripped his hand from her grip.

_“No!”_

~

With a hideous gasp, Will jerked forward from his mother’s grip, forehead beaded with sweat and eyes wide, wide open. In a heartbeat, Joyce’s hands flew over his face, brushing his hair back, cooing gentle words into his ear.

But he didn’t seem to hear. Instead, he snatched her fussing wrist and pushed it aside, lurching forth  from the sofa, hands blindly lunging for the map that was still spread across the coffee table. His two friends leaned in towards him as his shaking finger traced the line of the Indianapolis interstate, through the service station, off onto another road…

And stopped.

For a moment, in the muted room, the only sound was the continued hush of the rain and the huff of Will’s heavy breaths. Then, very slowly, Dustin adjusted his microphone and pressed the button on his radio.

“Mike? I hope you’re ready – I have a grid reference for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wa-hey, I managed it! I've bascially written this entire chapter in about two days, so please excuse any mistakes you find, I didn't have a lot of time to work on it if I wanted to meet my deadline! In fact, if you find any problems, please feel free to leave a comment and I'll go back and edit!  
> That's the end of Halloween week! Hope you all had a good one, and you enjoyed these more regular uploads. We're flashing through this slightly slow bit in the hopes that the next bit will pick up a bit more. It certainly won't be daily any more, but stay tuned for hopefully weekly updates!  
> All the kudos and comments are greatly appreciated.
> 
> WSQ


	21. Chapter 21

_“What good is a damn grid reference when we don’t have a – zzt! – map?”_

Dustin stared at his friends, hopelessly lost, until Will span on his bottom and thrust a hand beneath the sofa, drawing out another radio.

Butterfly stickers. El’s.

“Mike? This is Will. Listen, I know where you need to be. It’s gonna sound weird, but trust me.”

A moment’s silence made his heart skip a beat, but then, the radio buzzed again.

_“Why wouldn’t I trust you?”_

Will leaned into the speaker as he talked. “Remember that field trip we went on with Mrs Clicks, back in sixth grade? It was the dead of winter and everything was icy and we had to head up past Indianapolis, on the highway.” He cast a glance to his friends. “Dustin got bus sick and sat at the front the whole time.”

Lucas snorted with laughter, earning a death stare from the boy in question.

_“What does this have to do with El?”_

“Well, while we were there, there was that huge pile-up on the interstate. Remember? And all the traffic got diverted. We didn’t think we’d get home, until the bus took this tiny turn-off in the middle of nowhere. Just before the huge gas station. And we went over that giant bridge.”

_“zzt… you’re breaking… repeat… zzt”_

“Mike?”

_“You’re breaking up Will, can you repeat? Over!”_

“The bridge! Mike, do you remember the bridge?”

A few feeble blips, and all that remained was the soft hum of static.

~*~

The beemer bumped up over the lowered curb and hummed across the forecourt, coming to rest with a squeak at the furthest pump from the shop. The movement finally stirred the girl in the passenger seat, and Max jerked upright with a groggy squint and a mess of auburn hair.

“Unh… Where the hell are we now?”

Steve wobbled the gear stick before releasing the clutch and snatching his key from the ignition. “Gas station, as promised,” he smirked, twirling the keychain around his finger. Max rolled her eyes.

“Don’t tell me, you didn’t catch them?”

“It’s not my fault they disappeared into thin air!”

“Okay, okay, geez.” Flipping the catch, the girl kicked the door open and hauled herself stiffly from the car. With day slowly seeping into night, the road running alongside them was growing quieter. Her stomach rumbled. Everyone was going home for dinner, she thought bitterly.

The slam of the door made her jump, and she whipped around to find Steve leaning, both arms on the roof, and staring her down.

“…What?”

“You coming in for snacks or not?”

“I don’t have any cash.”

Steve snorted, shaking his head a little. “I asked if you wanted anything, not if you wanted to pay.”

His gaze was somehow piercing, and Max folded her arms. “I can pay you back.”

The teen shook his head, lazily righting himself and striding towards the store, keys still swinging around his finger. “Have you seen my house? I can afford a couple Nutty bars and a can of Coke.”

He was so suave; Max could’ve kicked him. But, then again, he had offered her food, and with the cramps in her stomach and the foul taste still lingering in her mouth, she could’ve gone for anything right now.

 _Pick your battles_. That’s what mum used to say, before she picked ‘none’ and went with it.

The inside of the shop was just as shitty as she expected. It stank of plastic and disinfectant, even though the floor looked like it hadn’t seen a mop in decades. The neon lights were overly bright and the warmth of bodies seemed to carry the salty stench of cardboard hotdogs.

Steve paused, looking around. “Alright. Cool. Get what you want.”

She looked him up and down one last time, just in case he was joking, but when he quirked an eyebrow at her, she rolled her eyes and made a bee-line for the sandwich cabinet. Scoured the alluring display of ham, egg or cheese. Settled for the newest-looking roast beef.

As she turned for the sweet aisle, she spotted a squat-looking trucker in an ill-fitting vest at the magazine stand, pouring over a copy of something she was really sure she shouldn’t be seeing. His eyes flicked up to her, looked her up and down. She gripped her sandwich and made a dash for Steve.

“Is that it?” He frowned at her single sandwich box.

“I’m… not that hungry.”

He whipped open the drinks fridge beside him and grabbed a couple of soda cans. “Sure you don’t want a drink?”

“Is there water?”

Steve flashed her a concerned look, but snatched up a bottle and deposited it in her arms. “I mean it, you know. Anything you want.”

“I _want_ to get out of here.” Her gaze once again flashed to the trucker, who was neck deep in his magazine, trying to pretend he wasn’t still watching her. When she looked away, however, she realised Steve had spotted her.

“What’s going on?”

“N-Nothing.”

“He giving you trouble?”

“No. Seriously, don’t make a scene.”

Steve locked eyes with the trucker, dropping the fridge door with a resounding _thud._ The guy had to good sense to look away.

The sound of their items hitting the counter made the poor cashier jump feet. She fumbled with the phone she was chatting away to, made a hurried excuse and dropped the receiver onto the table top. As she stepped forward, however, she took one look at Steve, cast a glance out the window, and narrowed her eyes.

“You’re the kids parked at pump 8, right?”

Steve frowned. “Uh, yeah?”

“Well, you’re blocking the pump, and if you don’t move your car, you’ll be paying for the fuel the last idiots stole.”

As the teen grumbled with a protest of ‘ _how are we blocking the pump when there’s no-one else here?’,_ Max furrowed her brow and leaned on the desk. “When did this happen?”

“When do you think? About ten-fifteen minutes ago. The numbers are still on the pump, aren’t they?”

Max threw a pointed look at Steve. “W-what were they driving?”

The cashier scowled. “Why the hell d’you wanna know?”

“Just wondering what the hell can move fast enough to fill and fly out here.”

With a look of pointed boredom, the girl huffed, “Some battered old van. Idiots had their logo plastered all over the side. Like, what, do they think they’re gonna get away with that shit?”

Max and Steve exchanged another look.

“Listen, you kids gonna move or what?”

The trucker from the magazine stand was on the move. Steve grabbed a handful of the nearest candy bars and slammed them on the desk with a twenty.

As they went to leave, Max watched with a certain nagging feeling as the woman turned to pick up her phone again. Then, she jabbed Steve in the ribs.

“Got any quarters?”

~*~

“So what do we do now?” Lucas fidgeted uncomfortably, pacing around the table like the room just wasn’t big enough. His thumbs twisted in his jeans pockets.

Will didn’t seem to register that he’d spoken. In fact, he was beginning to wonder whether the boy had actually fallen asleep, tangled on the sofa with his head on his mum’s lap. Mrs Byers herself was gently playing with his hair, her eyes lost somewhere outside the window.

The only one who looked up was Dustin, but he only unhelpfully shrugged. “I guess we just wait. I mean, what else can we do?”

That was indeed the question. Lucas wrinkled his nose, wandering up to the window, then continuing to thoughtfully amble.

“You boys can always pack that shopping away for me,” Mrs Byers suggested quietly.

Before they could even look at one another, though, the house was suddenly filled with a jarring, shrill ringing. The noise had Will’s mum jerking bolt upright and the other two boys’ hair stood on end.

Lucas wasted no time in sprinting across the room. Not because he was expecting anyone, but it was at least something to do. But, as he snatched up the phone and pressed it to his ear, his mind went totally blank, and he stood there dumbly, listening to the muffled sounds of awkward shuffling and car noise.

“ _Uhm… hello?”_ The voice on the other end was distinctly familiar. Too familiar. A voice he hadn’t realised he’d been longing to hear.

“Max?”

_“Lucas? What the hell!”_

“Max! It’s so- …uh, I mean… hey.”

On the other end, Max snickered. _“Yeah, real smooth, Stalker. Are you with everyone else?”_

“Define ‘everyone else’.”

_“Everyone else! Mike, Dustin, Will, Nancy, Jonathan, Mrs Byers.”_

Lucas turned to the sight of Dustin hovering expectantly. He made a grabbing motion for the phone, which went pointedly ignored.

“Uh, no, yes, yes, no, no, yes.”

The sound of a car pulling up behind her made Lucas’s heart skip a beat. It stopped with a squeak, the engine cut out, and then he heard a door slam.

“Max…? What’s going on?”

_“Hold on.”_

There was another voice, one he recognised the tone of, and Max had a hurried, hushed conversation with whoever it was before the receiver changed hands.

_“Lucas?”_

“Steve?”

_“Yeah, don’t pee your pants. Is Dustin there?”_

“Uh…” Eyes bored into the back of his head, but somehow, Lucas didn’t want to let go just yet. For once, it actually felt like he was _helping_.

_“Listen, you can talk to your girlfriend later. Put Dustin on!”_

The phone was hurriedly snatched from his hand, and he staggered back, blinking, as Dustin effortlessly launched into conversation, the way Lucas still hadn’t worked out how to do.

He wrinkled his nose bitterly. Mike thought he was all these amazing things: a great boyfriend; a smart student; _Mr Cool._ But what good was he really, when he couldn’t even hold a phone conversation? He slouched against the wall, arms folded, scuffing his toe into the carpet. He just couldn’t stand the endless, useless waiting. Give him a monster to fight any day.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not American, and I feel like it really shows. Do you people even have sandwich cabinets in your petrol stations?
> 
> I'm sorry it's been so long, just running two jobs and all the stuff I do on the side makes things difficult. But hey! I prayed for the time to write this chapter and came home and boom! There it was. 
> 
> WSQ


	22. Chapter 22

“Oh my God, just give me the phone!” Max slapped a hand against Steve’s shoulder, but he waved her hurriedly away. Instead, she settled for throwing her arms up and giving him her best _you’re-an-idiot_ glare.

Leaning into the payphone, Steve ran a hand through his hair. “We’re at a gas station… The one on the interstate! … what direction do you think?!”

Max rolled her eyes, hard. What could she do? If the dipshit wanted to hog the phone, then so be it. So what if she couldn’t let Lucas know she was ok – who cared?

Clearly not Steve.

She stomped towards the car, slouching a hip against it and staring down the endless freeway, watching the cars crawling by in the half-light. The long, straight road made them look so slow, nowhere near almost seventy. In a way, she could’ve sat and watched forever, listening to the thrum of their tyres and breathing in the bright, sickly-sweet scent of petrol. It was almost calming.

That was, until she spotted a car that caught her attention. Ancient and rattling along like it was barely holding together, with a streak of rust over its bonnet that made it look more reddish than its original shit-brown.

“Uh, Steve…?”

No response. Apparently, his argument with Dustin over grid references was far more important.

“Steve!”

He turned, and then _actually_ waved her away like she was some dog demanding food. She wrinkled her nose. He wasn’t gonna get away with that. Not on her life.

Max marched back up to the teen and snatched the receiver from his hand, fixing him with a glare that said _you better listen to me_.

“Hey! What the hell?!”

“What colour is Jonathan’s car?”

Steve’s eyes bulged. “Jonathan’s- like, I dunno, brown? Why the hell…”

In lieu of answering, Max simply pointed to the road, and he looked up just in time to watch the car go speeding out of sight, at least twenty over the limit.

For a long time, Steve just stood and stared. Then, like a cassette player finally starting to turn, he sprang to life, grabbing the phone back. “Dustin, target acquired. See you on the other side.”

 _Finally,_ Max thought to herself as the two of them sprang into the Beemer and Steve slammed it into reverse.

~*~

“He… hung up on me?” Dustin stared at the receiver like it was gonna start chattering once again. “He hung up on me! Son of a bitch, do you believe this?”

Lucas quirked an eyebrow. “What did he say?”

“He said he can’t read grid references. Which is bullshit, ‘cos he told me he went to camp-”

“And then what?” Lucas frowned, frustration tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“ _Target acquired._ Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

For a moment, they both simply stared at the floor, deep in thought, before, all of a sudden, the realisation dawned on them, and they locked eyes. As one, their lips plucked a single name out of the air.

_“Mike!”_

~*~

Steve’s BMW made short work of naught-to-ninety, cruising along the interstate like a kid on an oily slip-n-slide. In the passenger seat, Max chewed her lip. The only taillights she could see were those of a truck a hundred yards ahead. Jonathan’s car had all but disappeared.

As they ghosted down an incline and into a perfectly cambered corner, overtaking the truck with ease, a tiny point of light began to grow out of the ever-deepening night.

Max’s brows knitted. “The hell is that?”

As they grew closer and closer, she shuffled to the edge of her seat, nose as close to the glass as she dared.

“Steve, I think you better stop.”

“Wh- again?! You said you were fine!”

“No, Steve, stop the car!”

The brakes came on so fiercely Max was afraid the seatbelt was going to cut her throat. Right in the centre of the carriageway, the car came to a shuddering halt, bucking on skidding tyres.

Steve whipped around to face her. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you eat!”

“ _Excuse me_? You _let_ me eat?” Max snarled back without a second thought. “Anyway, who cares, this isn’t about me – look at the road!”

Steve flashed it a quick glance. “Yeah, its two lanes wide and goes straight to Indianapolis. What’s your point?”

She’d already wrapped her hand around the door handle before he was done whittering. “The tyre marks, genius.”

Max didn’t hang around for Steve to catch up. She sprang from the car, running around into the blinding beams of the headlights, and, sure enough, the road in front of her was smeared with enough rubber that the tyres it came from couldn’t possibly still be legal.

Her partner finally popped his door and stuck his head out, frowning deeply. “Uh… yeah, so, drag racers?”

“I don’t think so…” Max knelt down and pressed her fingers into the marks, recoiling at the warmth. She then followed them until her gaze fell upon a single streetlight and a tiny little road. “It’s them. It has to be.”

~*~

Dustin and Lucas raced back into the living room, words tumbling from their mouths until they were abruptly shushed. Mrs Byers waved her arms, a piercing look in her eye.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! One at a time!”

Lucas leapt in before Dustin had a chance. “It was Steve and Max. They’re ok!”

“They’re halfway up the interstate,” the other boy, not to be out-done, quickly chipped in. “Sounds like they’ve seen Jonathan’s car.”

They could almost see the hope fluttering in Mrs Byers chest as both she and Will leaned eagerly forward. “So they got our message?”

The boys bubbling laughter was all the answer they needed. However, as Lucas reached out to throw a jovial high-five at Will, he realised the boy was the only one not smiling. In fact, it almost looked like he was somewhere else entirely, eyes fixed on something across the room. Something no-one else could see.

“Uh, Will?... you okay?”

The mirth died. Will’s lips twitched uncertainly. Then, very slowly, he looked between each of them, a certain horror drawing lines beneath his eyes.

“I… I see her.” He swallowed thickly. “She wants to talk to me.”

~*~

Steve gripped the wheel a little tighter at the sight of the drop on either side of the bridge. “Holy shit, this is amazing.”

“You’re insane,” Max growled. When he glanced over, she was leaning back, her face unconcerned, but he was sure he caught sight of her clutching the door handle.

On the other side, the trees engulfed them again, and Max leaned forward, scouring the pool of brightness made by the headlights. Along the edges of the road, she was sure she could make out deep gouges in the dirt, tyre marks from enormous vehicles too big for the tiny back road.

As it levelled out, the tarmac straightened, giving them a wide view between the trees, to where Max was damn sure she could see something moving.

“Is that… smoke?”

The two exchanged a look.

As they got closer, Steve let the car roll to a halt. Max leaned closer to the windshield, watching the curls and coils slowly rising and dissipating. Even though they were almost completely gone, a wisp or two were still catching a glimmer of unnatural light.

“Steve, the road.”

He followed Max’s shaking finger, his heart skipping when he realised where the smoke was coming from.

More tyre marks, this time skidding down a rough-looking turning.

Steve shook his head. “It has to be them.”

The engine roared, and they were off in pursuit once again. 

By the time the car came to an unsure halt, the whole forest was alight with a bright, white glow. Max had been staring at the huge fence for quite some time as it meandered beside the road. Now, as the trees opened out, it cut an unnatural border between the bare grass of the compound and the wild forest beyond, towering at least seven feet and topped with deadly coils of razor wire. Super friendly.

Behind it, the building in the centre of the compound was grey and severe, dating back to at least the fifties and surrounded by a courtyard of cracked concrete slabs. If it weren’t for the lights, then place may as well have been abandoned. The grass, at least, needed a serious cutting.

Something in the distance caught Max’s eye, and she tapped Steve’s shoulder, holding her breath as he turned and saw it too.

Jonathan’s car, resting lop-sided, bumper buried in the chain-link fence, with the doors left wide open and nobody in sight.  

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Writing this fic has become such hard work. The next scene has been a real killer, so I hope it reads well. You'll just have to find out!   
> I'm hoping to upload on Saturdays as a rough schedule, depending on how much I manage to write this week. Don't hold me to that, thought - with a stonker of a cold and a seriously busy week ahead, I might struggle to get it finished. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me! Hope you're enjoying this journey as much as I am
> 
> WSQ


	23. Chapter 23

Mike let out a snarl of frustration, throwing all his weight against the soldier’s grip, but it was no use – the guy was obviously trained for this. More than that, he was totally ripped. A thirteen-year-old kid stood no chance. How was it fair that _he_ got the most jacked guard of the three?

The only thing he achieved was forcing the soldier to lift him into the air by the arms he had twisted behind Mike’s back, forcing them up so hard, he began to think they might just break.

“Mike!” His head jerked towards the sound of his sister’s voice, and he baulked as he caught sight of both her and Jonathan walking meekly beside their escorts, so calm that the soldiers barely had their hands on them. _Are you kidding me? They’re just gonna give up like that?_

With Mike’s feet suddenly freed, and the boy wasted no time in trying to use them, digging a heel as hard as he could into the guy’s knee. And sure, it did make him stumble, but there was no way it was bad enough that throwing Mike heavily to the floor was necessary.

Nor was is necessary to snatch his collar and pin him into the solid linoleum with enough force to empty his lungs.

“You gonna be a problem, kid?” The man spat.

Again, Nancy shouted to him. “Mike! Stop it.”

He looked over at her darkly as his fingers tightened around the soldier’s wrist, trying desperately to alleviate the pressure on his sternum.

Nancy fixed him with shining, serious eyes. “Trust me,” she breathed. Mike stared a moment longer, before letting his head drop back onto the lino.

The next moment, it seemed, they were being shoved into a small, dark room full of equipment; machinery, screens, filing cabinets – that sort of thing. In the centre was a single long, thin table, which the solider made damn sure he slammed Mike into the moment they entered.

Jonathan and Nancy were shoved in behind him, and Mike whipped around to face their escort with a defiant snarl curling his mouth.

“You bastards can’t keep us here.”

The taller soldier looked down on him haughtily, lips pressed together into a smug smile, before turning deftly on his heel, stepping through the door and slamming it shut behind him.  

“Hey!” Mike flew at the door, slamming his fists into the hard metal, barely flinching as pain shimmered up his arms. “Hey! Let us out!”

A shadow passed across the small, frosted glass pane, but nothing else. If anything, he was sure he heard a quiet snickering from the other side. Mike tried the handle, rattling it loudly just so the guy outside would know how pissed off he was. The rage that clawed at his belly was almost unbearable. It seemed that throwing his shoulder into the door was the only way to relieve it, the jolt hard enough that he swore he saw stars.

“Mike!” Nancy hissed from the other side of the room. Trying not to look as though he was clutching his shoulder, he turned his best glare of lazy annoyance on her, to which she gave her own look of exasperation. “Knock it off.”

She sounded about as tired as he suddenly felt. Knowing there was no way out, that El could be just feet away and there was no way of helping her – it made his stomach sink so far into his belly that it felt as though it dragged everything with it. The fury fire was quenched, leaving nothing in its place.

Rounding the nearest chair and then slumping down into it, he let his gaze drift lazily across the room, trying to take it all in. There were no air ducts – he checked for those first. That would explain the ridiculous heat already building up. The masses of equipment, however, had nothing to do with it - it looked as though everything was turned off. From the bank of screens on one side – CCTV, he assumed - to the radio communication array on the other – all was still and silent.

The surface of the table was scoured with marks from slide-rules, dividers and compasses. One coffee mug was actually left behind - empty, sadly. He wrapped tight fingers around his now aching shoulder, his eyes alighting on a tiny flash of red, tucked away in the corner behind filing cabinets. Some sort of fire alarm point?

Dwelling on it was impossible, though, and Jonathan caught his attention, drifting towards the bank of screens, peering at the tiny labels on each frame.

“Check these out,” he breathed, running a finger down each one. “‘West Entrance’, ‘Stairwell 3’, ‘Vestibul’…” Then, like a breath of wind, a glimmer of concern passed across his brow. “‘The Cell’…?”

Mike sat forward.

“Lemme see that,” Nancy scurried over without a second thought. Her attention then turned to the control panel, a dizzying array of buttons. “Think you can get this thing working?”

Jonathan shrugged, then stopped, as though a more important thought had crossed his mind. “…Doesn’t it seem funny to you that there’s only one cell?”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Nancy nodded. “A cell… for what?”

Frowning, Jonathan set to work, and Nancy took to standing with a hand on one hip, the other pinching her chin, deep in thought.

Trust these two to go all _Scooby-Doo_ on the place.

It was exhausting. Dull. He was so tired of doing this, getting in danger, losing his girlfriend over and over again. Mike slouched back and let his gaze wonder again, scouring the floor as though it could hold the answers to everything. The hard, wiry carpet was filthy, like it had never been cleaned. Or changed, judging by the flattened marks by the door.

He was about to turn away and stare at the ceiling, for want of a better thing to do, when he noticed a flash of white poking out from underneath the nearest filing cabinet. Half of him couldn’t be bothered. The other half, however, gnawed away curiously. Like an angel on his shoulder, it whispered in his ear. _What is it? Is it hidden? Why?_

Deep inside him, something smiled. The voice sounded just like Dustin.

Checking that Nancy and Jonathan were still occupied, Mike slipped from the chair onto his knees, stretching out his fingers and sliding the corner of thick, shining paper towards himself, finding in the centre a strange, haunted pair of eyes staring back at him.

It was a polaroid. Almost like a mugshot, but so thick with dust that he could barely make it out. He tried breathing on it, and when that didn’t work, wiped it across his knee, until the face became clear.

The girl in the photo was almost familiar, though he’d never seen her before. A face left hollow where she should have been full, with bright, frightened eyes set in dark frames. A white robe hung from her shoulders. It was her hair, though – that’s what he recognised the most. Cropped right down to the scalp.

“Nancy…” he murmured.

As he listened to her breath stutter, he turned the photo over, traced the smallest red ink caption.

His sister tiptoed towards him. “What is it?”

He finally looked up as she knelt beside him. “It’s… she’s another experiment, like Eleven.” He lifted the polaroid into the light where Nancy could see it. “Look at the back.”

She turned the paper over and read.

“Subject 009…”

All of a sudden, Jonathan gave a shout. “I’ve got it!”

The CCTV screens leapt into life, one by one, and Nancy and Mike leapt to their feet. There were so many images, flickering away – people racing up and down corridors, someone waiting for the microwave, a couple of soldiers standing guard – but there was only one he was interested in.

“There’s someone in the cell,” Jonathan’s finger landed on the screen, and Mike’s eyes snapped to it.

“That explains why we’re in here,” Nancy muttered, biting her lip as she put two and two together.

Swiftly, Mike looked between the blurry image and the photograph. There was no doubt. “It’s not her.”

When he held the image up, Jonathan peered hard at the two, then curtly nodded. “Then who is it?”

Squinting, Mike studied the figure. It was hard to tell anything when the black-and-white image was sitting, facing away from him, but he was sure their shirt was plaid-patterned, and their hair was short, dark and curled. It could be. Surely, it had to be.

And then she moved, and he knew.

“It’s El,” he whispered, the words setting off a fluttering in his chest that made him feel light-headed. She was here. Alive. And it made his heart ache so hard that it hurt.

“But… what about Number 009?” Nancy chimed in, as she always did, in her bid to ruin everything. “If El’s in the cell, then where’s-”

She never got a chance to finish the thought, however. The lock clunked heavily, and the door flew open, crashing against the wall.

The tall soldier was back, with company. Not the other two guards, though – he stepped aside with a grin as he entered, making way for a small, blonde woman. She wasn’t much to look at, in her pink woollen jacket and skirt, but there was something in the way she walked, the way she held her shoulders. Something about her was dangerous.

And strangely familiar.

“Oh, there they are!” She beamed as she caught sight of them, her cropped blonde hair bobbing as she clapped her hands together. “Our little guests!”

Mike’s brows knitted together. He knew her, he was sure. He’d seen her around town. Around the school.

“…Troy’s mum…?”

“Oh, you know my darling Troy?”

“Wish I didn’t.”

It wasn’t really meant to slip out, and as soon as Mike realised he’d uttered the words aloud, he bit his tongue. She seemed to freeze, just for a moment, that sunny demeanour faltering as though she just couldn’t process the thought of somebody not loving her precious son.

“Well,” Commander Walsh finally said, and the perfect, prissy smile was back. “It’s a good thing you do know him. After all, we wouldn’t have found your little friend if he didn’t, would we?”

Despite his better judgement, Mike bristled, squaring his shoulders like he could really win this fight. His sister quickly grabbed him before he had a chance to do anything stupid.

“What do you want with her?” Nancy growled, and to her credit, her voice was impressively even.

“What I do with the girl is not your concern. What concerns you is the manner in which _you_ will be leaving this building.” Even though her voice was sickly sweet, a thrill was creeping into her eyes that made Mike glad of his sister’s grip on his arm. “You can all swear to never mention it again, and then go on your way. Or, if you’d rather, Jason here will escort you out in three little boxes.”

Mike swore he heard the soldier crack his knuckles.

Walsh smiled. “I’ll give you some time to choose.”

Spinning on her heel, she went to leave, but Mike couldn’t let his chance slip. Pulling away from Nancy, he shouted after her; “What did Nine choose?”

Commander Walsh froze, then slowly turned back into the room, her eyes flashing, observing. Taking in information like a plughole drains water. Her gaze alighted on the flickering CCTV screen, on the photo still clutched in Mike’s fingers.

“Been meddling, have we?”

Mike swallowed. Walsh had planted her heels like she was driven into the ground, clasping her hands before her.

“Poor Subject Nine. Such an awful shame.” There was fire in her eyes now, enough to make Jason take a step back. “She took the latter, I’m afraid. Just wasn’t strong enough.”

The grin that spread across her face made Troy’s torments seem like a pillow fight.

“Your little friend, though? She’s strong. We’ll have much more fun with her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 23, otherwise known as Mike Wheeler needs a damn break, poor child.
> 
> I did it! I posted a chapter! I'm not dead!  
> There's a lot happening in the next few chapters which is taking a lot of effort to coordinate, which, when you work two jobs and have ADHD, make concentrating in the evenings very difficult. Particularly with things you really care about and want to get right.   
> I have plans for each storyline for this next bit, so I will endevour to keep at it. Thank you all for reading!


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yoooooo I'm back!  
> And not only that, I have a two-chapter buffer! Finally! I've pressed through the hardest bit of fic writing of my life and I can honestly say I'm pretty pleased with the result. Thank God!
> 
> I only hope you guys love it too.
> 
> WSQ

The car was completely empty – Nancy, Mike and Jonathan hadn’t brought anything. Nothing they hadn’t taken with them, anyway. Max followed the light of Steve’s emergency torch as it flashed over the faded fabric of the front seats, then followed him as he moved to look through the back window.

“No obvious signs of struggle,” he muttered to himself, like he was some sort of TV private investigator. Max bit back a snort. Below the open door frame, pressed into the mud, she could just about make out the imprint of a shoe not much larger than her own. To leave a dent like that, Mike must have jumped out at some speed, but he couldn’t have been pulled, or the mark would be smeared.

The car was listing heavily towards the road, perched as it was halfway up the steep bank. As Steve headed around to the driver’s side, the light of his torch glinted off something metal below the steering wheel.

The car wasn’t running, but Jonathan had left the keys in.

Max cast a glance at the fence looming behind her. Or, at least, what she could see of it. The bank here was sheer, higher than where Steve had left their own ride, and the compound was hardly visible above the rise.

Which meant…

“Oh, he’s good.”

“Who?” Steve’s head appeared above the roof.

“Jonathan. He’s parked in the only blind spot this place has.”

He could only seem to stare at her as she turned for the bank, scrambling up towards the fence, hands and feet digging for purchase into freshly-wet dirt. As the rise grew closer, so the building began to loom above it, floodlights catching her in the eye and momentarily blinding her. As her vision adjusted, she could make out the structure’s two floors, lights in only a few of the windows. 

Steve’s trainers were now scuffling below her. Staying low, Max reached out as the chain links grew closer, tangling her fingers through and pulling the fence towards her. As she did, a section pulled away where it had been cut.

_So that’s how they got in._

The more pressing question was, how did they make it all the way across the open grass and concrete without being spotted? The wide, flat parade square clung tightly to the structure’s foundations, and, keeping close to the shadows beneath the floodlights, one or two guards paced back and forth, each one armed with a vicious-looking gun.

Steve finally appeared at her shoulder. “You mind not running off, Rambo?”

But Max was no longer listening. There was a noise, a sort of low-level hum, that was gnawing at her attention. Her gaze snapped to the road, but there was nothing there. No car approached. There were no lights, no other roads.

The next moment, her head whipped around. Inside the compound, a ring of light was gliding across the grass, washing smoothly across the patchy scrub, slowly swinging towards them.

The sound hum grew loud, warping into a roar, and, as if from nowhere, the shadows gave up the silhouette of a quad bike heading straight for them.

Their searchlight hit the fence, metres away.

“Steve, get down!”

The two flung themselves onto their backs down the bank, and just in time, as the light washed over where they had been just moments later, dragging a long line past where they now lay and alighting on Jonathan’s car.

The quad stopped. It’s two passengers stepped off, their torches trained on their target. Max pressed a hand into her mouth. _Don’t move. Don’t even breathe_.

Slowly, one guard lifted the walkie that hung from his lapel and brought it to his lips.

“Uh, control? We’ve found something.”

Where Steve’s shoulder pressed into her own, she could feel him tensing, gulping, preparing for a fight.

“…Yeah, the Mystery Kids’ car. We’ve found it. What do you want us to do, over?”

Steve let out a huge (and _noisy_ ) sigh of relief. Luckily, the guards seemed too focused on the radio reply to hear him.

 _“Uh, yeah, 2-1, if you head back to command, we’ll send a patrol around and pick it up before the visitor arrives, over._ ”

“Copy that, control. 2-1 out.”

A moment later, and the two men were back on their quad, and the searchlight ghosted off the vehicle and on down the compound.

Max gasped. It felt like she hadn’t taken a breath in months.

“Holy shit…” Beside her, Steve let out a high-pitched little giggle. “I thought we were goners.”

Max simply gulped, blinking into the star-laden sky and thanking whatever God was watching over them that day.

“Steve,” she finally croaked.

“Yeah?”

“We gotta move your car.”

~*~

“Do you really have to go back?”

Joyce’s brow was set in a permanent scowl as she bustled across the living room, perching on the sofa cushion beside her boy. Will looked almost guilty as he nodded, and a part of her felt instantly bad. After all, Eleven might as well have been her child, too.

“She’s scared, Mum. And she’s all alone.”

Dear, sweet Will. Of course he had to go back. Joyce put on her best understanding smile, fighting the turn at the corners of her mouth, and brushed her son’s hair back from his clammy forehead.

“You just make sure you’re both safe, okay?”

“I will.”

“A-And if you get too tired, you come out of there, you hear me?”

Will’s little knowing smile told her she worried too much. With a little breath of a sigh, she simply placed the cup of water that Dustin handed her into Will’s hands and made sure he drank it.

~

It felt as though Will had barely closed his eyes, wrapped in his mother’s arms on the sofa, when a voice hissed behind him.

“Will!”

His eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness as he span around to face Eleven, An apology was already poised to tumble from his lips, but the alien, tense look on her face silenced him. Her eyes darted back and forth, and she raised a slow, trembling finger to her lips.

“Listen.”

Will let his breath pass his lips with barely a sound, ears straining for a mention of whatever it was El was looking for. But, after a seemingly endless pause, he had to pinch his brow and shake his head.

El looked away, her face betraying a deep, longing pain. “I… I thought I heard him.”

Will felt a chill creep up his stomach. “Heard… who?”

El took a moment, stammering like she couldn’t quite believe it herself. Then, eyes shining, she finally found his gaze.

“I… I thought… it was Hopper.”

~*~

Mike could hear the cold blood rushing through his veins as he pressed himself back into Nancy and Jonathan. He’d already fought all kinds of monsters. Who knew the scariest of them all wore heels and stank of _Yves Saint Laurent?_

Commander Walsh wet a finger and ran it along her lips. “You’re smart, all of you: I’ll give you that. And I must say, I do like smart children.”

Her heels clicked on the hard floor as she paced lazily towards them. Mike felt Nancy’s arms wrap around him, dragging him with her as she stepped away.

 “One cell, one subject – I mean, I may as well tell you. You won’t be telling anyone anyway.” The woman suddenly stopped. “We were only ever meant to have one subject. That’s why we were here in the first place, so far away from the others…”

“Was she dangerous?” Jonathan breathed.

“Far from it,” the commander replied. “She was weak. Couldn’t hurt us, even if she tried. Low risk, low potential, but at least out here, her whining couldn’t disturb the others.”

“You monsters,” Nancy breathed.

Walsh simply laughed.

But, before the woman could say any more, the room was filled with the cacophony of hurried tapping footsteps. A flushed-looking and smartly dressed young lady appeared in the doorway. Probably a secretary or something. She hesitated for a moment, her eyes flashing towards them, before giving Troy’s mum a curt nod.

“Commander Walsh. Recovery and Transfer is 15 minutes out.”

Her lips twitched. “Good.”

“He wants to speak to you,” the women murmured. Walsh gave her a curt nod. Then, as the secretary retreated, she turned back to her prisoners.

“Well. Sounds like I have some preparations to make-”

Something was making Mike’s stomach turn. Maybe it was the look in her eye, the excitement and greed. Or perhaps it was some sort of innate sense for danger. Nevertheless, he couldn’t bite his tongue.

“Who is it, your boyfriend?”

Walsh’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, heavens, no! Jason is right here.” The look the two briefly shared was gag-worthy. “No, I don’t suppose you’d know him. Eleven does, though. Rather well, I might assume.”

All the air suddenly rushed from Mike’s lungs, and he had to snatch Nancy’s sleeve just to stay upright. His eyes drifted to Jonathan’s face, and the desperate parting of the older boy’s lips told him everything he needed to know.

It wasn’t just him. He wasn’t being paranoid. They knew it too.

It was Brenner. It had to be.

“They’ll kill her,” Jonathan growled dangerously.

Troy’s mum quirked an eyebrow. “What makes you think I care?”

And then, like that, she was gone.

~*~

Steve and his long legs were charging ahead, leaving Max jogging to catch up. Not that she blamed him. Everything suddenly felt so much more dangerous, more fragile. More exposed.

“So they got through the fence, and what? Crept past the guards?”

Steve shook his head. “Nah. They’d never make it.”

“So why go through?”

Steve scratched at the back of his head. “I dunno, maybe… maybe they meant to get caught. I mean, Jonathan and Nancy, they’ve done this before.”

“They got themselves caught on _purpose_?”

Steve shrugged, leaving Max chewing at her lip. The car wasn’t far away now, but the distance felt like a marathon with the possibility of being spotted at any given moment. Max glanced over her shoulder, but the quad bike and it’s two passengers were nowhere to be seen. There were a few people massing on the parade square, however, pointing in the direction of Jonathan’s car.

_We’ll send a patrol around and pick it up before the visitor arrives._

“Someone’s coming.”

Steve froze so suddenly Max ran into the back of him. “What?! Where?”

“No! I don’t mean now, I mean… the guy on the radio, he said he was gonna move the car ‘before the visitor arrives’. What the hell does that mean?”

Steve blew out a breath, turning to walk away. “Could be anybody. Some high and mighty general or something.”

“This isn’t the army, shit-brain.” Max stood her ground, digging her heels into the tarmac. “They capture their favourite experiment again and suddenly someone’s coming to visit… it can’t be a coincidence.”

Steve halted again, going strangely, unnaturally quiet.

“…Steve?”

“It’s him. It has to be.”

“Him? Who’s him?”

Steve slowly turned, his eyes full of a fear she’d rather she hadn’t seen.

“Dr. Brenner.”

~*~

If Nancy chewed her nails any more, they would probably start bleeding. Mike could hear her doing it, the tiny _chip chip chip_ of her teeth clicking through keratin. He wanted to ignore it, but even staring into the CCTV screen wasn’t doing the trick. There probably wasn’t much point staring at El when she wasn’t actually doing anything.

Really, he was trying to think, but the steady racing of his heartbeat kept washing his mind clear. That, and the shuffling of Jonathan’s pacing. Back and forth, back and forth – maybe eventually he’d wear a groove into the floor.

Mike scrunched his eyebrows into one another. Sure, he kind of wanted to snap at them both to stop, but what exactly would that achieve? Instead, he tried to focus on the blurry figure on the screen. He just wished he could somehow talk to her, let her know he was here, that he was going to get her out.

_Get her out? Yeah, right._

Now _that_ voice sounded like Lucas.

_How are you gonna get her out when you can’t even get yourself out?_

Mike sank down over the control panel, resting his chin on his folded arms. It was right, of course. He could wish for his friends all he liked, but they weren’t coming.

_They’d know what to do._

Mike closed his eyes, picturing Lucas, Will, and Dustin, all gathered round the Byer’s table. Home. Safe. Without him.

When he opened his eyes, Mike caught sight of El on the screen again. Except now she was facing directly towards him, staring down the camera, almost. And he stared back and hoped to God that she felt him, that she knew.

El was strong. All she needed was an opening, a distraction, and she’d be home free.

_His friends. What would they do?_

Will and Dustin, they were smart. They’d probably think their way out. Which was difficult, under pressure. And Lucas and Max? They were fighters. They’d smash their way out.

And him? What would he do?

~*~


	25. Chapter 25

El’s face crumpled like old tinfoil, the tears spilling forth down her nose as she hung her head. And, for the first time since Hopper had gone missing, Will really understood, no, _felt_ what she’d been feeling. Hiding away behind her anger and silence.

He’d almost felt the same way when his own Dad had left. When Lonnie had walked out in a flurry of anger and harsh words, and his mum had nothing to fall back on but a dwindling bank account and the empty stretch of sofa.

But Lonnie wasn’t presumed dead.

Of course, El would hold on to any hope she had. She’d been through so much, she’d fought so hard for the life she’d won, and all of a sudden, it was ripped out from under her. With a deep, guttural sob, she curled forward, hands pressing into her face like she could somehow keep the tears from falling.

Will couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he closed the distance between them and put a hand on her shoulder.

Like a radio finally finding its station, his brain jarred into some strange new frequency. A sudden sound made him flinch, and he felt the tremor rattle through El’s body, too. Her crying ceased and her head jolted up, meeting his gaze with curious, hesitant energy.

There was a sound drifting towards them now, circling them as it tried to place itself. A shuddering breath, the kind that rattles with relentless, freezing cold and unyielding exhaustion. The breath of a dying man.

The noise settled nearby, and for a moment, Will hesitated. El’s jaw locked, her shoulders straining with the uncertainty until it got the better of her, and she turned her head. And the softening of her face told him everything he needed to knew before he even followed her gaze.

A few meters away lay the wide-shouldered body of a man, on its side, the heaving if its ribs the only indication of life. Skin grey, clothes torn and grimy, face pressed into the slimy wet. Hollowed and broken almost to unfamiliarity, but still unmistakably recognisable.

“Hopper…”

His breathy exclamation seemed to awaken something in El, and in a heartbeat, she tore herself from Will’s grip and sprinted towards her dad. But, as her touch left him, he felt something change in the air, his brain growing strange and fuzzy, so that the image of her falling to her knees seemed hazy, somehow. And, as she reached her hands out towards him, Hoppers body seemed to sink, to contort, until he became just a shadow, and that shadow became smoke.

~*~

_Step 1: Think your way out._

Mike pushed up from the panel and, ignoring the looks he received from his sister and Jonathan, made a beeline for the door. They could make faces all they wanted – they’d thank him when he got them out of here.

The first thing he checked was the lock. Electronic. Access from the outside. Not ideal, but he had a plan B.

The look on Nancy’s face was priceless when he raised his fist and slammed it into the frosted glass panel. “Mike, what the hell are you doing?”

He took great pleasure in ignoring her. “Hey!” The guard on the other side was moving, but of course, the guy wasn’t going to give in easily. Not a problem, of course – the boy had all the time in the world. “Hey! Open the door! _Hey!”_

It took a minute, but eventually, there came a tapping of fingers on a keypad, and the clank of the lock springing open. The boy jumped back as the door swung towards him, a disgruntled face appearing in the crack.

“The hell do you want?” Jason snarled.

Sure, Mike had never been great at acting. His drama teacher hated him, and the only time he’d ever put effort in was when he was dramatizing his DnD campaigns. But, if he’d learned anything at all from the movies he loved to watch on repeat, now was the time to use it.

“Uh, hey… I, uh… I need a glass of water?”

The guard snorted, amused. “No.”

But, as he went to close the door, Mike lunged forward, plunging his hand into the gap and trying not to yelp as his hand was trapped. “Hey, no, seriously – I _need_ water. Please. I haven’t drunk anything all day, and I’m not feeling too great…”

The man narrowed his eyes, and Mike wished he could wilfully make his face turn grey or something. All he could do was purse his lips and press a hand into his stomach.

“The last thing you want is some kid dying on your floor.”

It took a moment, but luckily, Jason relented. Probably persuaded more by the fear of Walsh finding her prisoner passed out on the floor than by actual kindness. Muttering and mumbling, he shuffled back, letting the door fall shut behind him.

The pretence instantly dropped. Under the watchful (and somewhat confused) gaze of Nancy and Jonathan, Mike waited just a moment for safety before lunging for the door handle. It clanked. Dead. Locked.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Mike! What the hell?” Nancy closed the distance between them and gripped his shoulders, a certain amount of fraternal panic tugging the corners of her lips. “Are you serious? What are you doing?”

He straightened up and fixed her with a look that was almost definitely not dehydrated. “Nancy, Jonathan, listen to me – I have a plan. I just need you guys to trust me.”

~*~

“Hopper!”

El’s scream tore through the inky blackness. Will stepped back, arms wrapped tightly around himself, afraid for what she might do next.

What he didn’t expect was the strange sense of calm that seeped into her body. For a moment, she sat back on her haunches and simply stared at her hands. Then, almost gracefully, El turned to look back at him.

“Will…”

He swallowed thickly. “Yeah. I saw him too.”

Without warning, El rose and came towards him. At his nervous hunch, however, she seemed to faulter.

“Will… It was you.”

“…What?”

“You found him.”

Ice rushed through Will’s veins. _Him?_ There was no way. Surely. It couldn’t be.

“M-Me?”

“Like this.” When she stretched out a hand, Will knew he had no choice but to take it.

For a brief moment, the brain fuzz was back. Then, as suddenly as before, Hopper appeared on the ground before them.

He swallowed. “You mean… he’s real? He’s alive?”

El’s eyes shone when she nodded her assent. Then, like a switch had been flicked, her expression grew serious. “We need to find him.”

~*~

In the end, Steve had decided to stop the car at the edge of the forest, at a turn in the fence, reversing it into the undergrowth. It must have been just about the furthest point from the centre of the compound, which, although the distance worked to their advantage, made spywork very difficult. Max knitted her fingers into the links of the fence, pressing her forehead against it and narrowing her eyes to make out the tiny figures that milled far, far away near the building.

“Can you tell what’s going on?” Steve was unhelpfully hovering at her shoulder.

Max simply shook her head, before something clicked behind her eyes. “My bag. I need my bag!”

Steve didn’t even question it, just turned and ran for the car.

_He’s getting better._

When he returned, Max wasted no time in snatching her rucksack from Steve’s grip, plunging her hand inside it and digging out her binoculars. Or, rather, her boyfriend’s binoculars.

“They’re Lucas’s old ones. If you’re wondering.” Which the older boy very much was, judging by the look on his face.

Incredible, the difference they made, too. Now, she could see the soldiers almost as though they were stood right before her.

“They’re waiting outside the door. Not really moving…”

“Must be for Brenner.” He shuffled beside her. “Any sign of the quad?”

She took a moment to scan the area, then shook her head. “Nothing.”

Steve turned to lean against one of the towering fence posts, folding his arms and staring up at the darkening sky. “We need to get in there and help them.”

“And how exactly do we do that? Those men have _guns_ , Steve! Actual guns that can kill people!”

The older boy snorted. “So? I’m stealthy. Like a ninja. I’ll just climb the fence, sneak across the compound-”

“Since when have you been stealthy?!” Max goaded. “You couldn’t sneak through a bakery if it was on fire!”

“Well, what do you suggest?” He snapped back.

Max bit her lip, going back to the binoculars like the answer was written on the inside.

The soldiers hadn’t moved. Inside the windows of the second floor, she could see people passing by, hurrying to and fro like some puzzle level out of a video game. Or a film, maybe. Like they were a band of heroes being circled by hungry dogs.

“…In every film ever, when the main guys are sneaking away behind the guards, what’s the one thing they always do?”

Steve looked perplexed. “Uh… run?”

“No, idiot – they throw a rock!” Max pointed out towards the soldiers. When Steve continued to look confused, she blew out a breath. “They throw a rock in the bushes, way away from them, to give the guards something to chase. We need to grab their attention, draw them away from the building - it might give Nancy, Jonathan, El and Mike time to get out behind them.”

Steve hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah… yeah, okay, I like that plan. But rocks aren’t gonna reach them from here. We need something bigger.”

“Exactly,” Max smirked. “So: what have you got in your trunk?”

~*~

There was no time for Nancy and Jonathan to respond. The lock buzzed and the door jerked open once again, Jason shouldering through it and thrusting a half-full glass of water into Mike’s waiting hand.

The boy nodded (not at all smugly), taking a sip as he headed for his seat at the table. As he placed the cup down, however, instead of the buzz of the lock clicking shut again, he caught the shuffling of feet.

Jason still loomed over him. The guard folded his arms, triumph in the flash of his teeth, and dug in his heels as he leaned back against the wall. The door remained tantalisingly open beside him, like it was daring Mike to try and get through.

“…You gonna keep staring at me?”

“Protocol. You could do anything with that stuff.”

Mike quirked a brow. “Like drink it?”

Jason fixed him with a look that said _don’t mess with me_. Mike just narrowed his eyes and took a tiny, delicate sip.

“Well… you could be there a while,” came a voice from the other side of the room. Mike caught Jonathan’s eye as the older boy gave a little shrug. “You can’t drink water fast if you’re dehydrated – it’ll make you sick.”

Jason looked between Jonathan’s humble, apologetic look and Mike’s smarmy, sage nodding.

“Inside, outside, doesn’t matter. I’m here anyway.”

 _Shit_. Mike turned back to the table, watching his plan unbearably crumble around his ears. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. He had to come up with another plan. A plan that didn’t involve brute force.

A sharp red flash caught his attention. It gave him only a split-second warning before the wailing of a siren rattled through their ears, accompanied by the clattering of footsteps, the barking of commands, and the continuous sharp flashing of the red beacon affixed above their heads.

Mike leapt to his feet as Jonathan and Nancy surged forward.

“What the hell is that?” Nancy yelped.

A warm shiver trembled through Mike’s chest. Could it be? From here, he couldn’t quite make out the grainy CCTV image of the Cell, but he was damn sure he couldn’t see anyone in it. Maybe. Possibly.

Jason’s radio suddenly burst into life, with multiple voice cascading over one another.

_“All units to sector 4… possible intrusion… just beyond the perimeter… kids playing with fire…”_

Mike’s eyebrows shot up. “Geez, a fire?” He looked dead into Jason’s eyes, hand reaching for his cup, holding the glass out over the CCTV bank.

This could be their chance. It was time for _Step 2: Smash your way out._

“Sounds like you could use a little water.”

With a flourish, Mike upturned the glass and dumped its contents all over the control panel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh damn
> 
> I really missed smarmy-little-shit Mike from seasons 1 and 2, so here he is again in all his glory. Do let me know if you find any mistakes - these next few chapters have been reworked and reworked and that means I'm liable to miss things. 
> 
> Also, a quick note (that you probably won't often find at the end of Fanfics), I'm a pretty devout gospel Christian and I would love to answer any questions you guys might have about that! I know that before I really got into it, there were loads of things that confused me and I'd heard a lot of things that didn't make sense. I'm not gonna try to convert you! But if you're curious about anything, just go ahead and ask! No judgements!
> 
> WSQ


	26. Chapter 26

There was a sputtering and hissing, before the whole control panel choked out a cloud of smoke, sending a crackling surge through the wiring. Sparks flew, and the blast was loud and hot enough that Mike had to jump back out of the way.

When he lowered his arms from where they were covering his face, the whole place had gone dark.

“Holy shit,” he breathed.

_Must have tripped the power._

The slow pulsing red light of the alarm system continued to rise and fall with the wailing of sirens, and by its glow, the group watched with growing horror as the gravity of the situation gripped their guard. Jason’s furious gaze didn’t take long to fall on Mike.

The red beacon dimmed-

“You little bastard…”

-and flared again.

One more look around the room seemed enough to quench the man’s lingering shock, leaving only anger in its place.

“You little _bastard_!”

~*~

Out of the black came a sharp, sudden shout. Hopper’s image dissolved, and Will was terrified to find his friend looking shocked, confused, lips parted, eyes flitting. A red light was growing all around them, rising and falling, rising and falling, and the distant echo of a siren seemed to grow louder with each wail.

The smell of burning electronics hit them like a tidal wave, and with the sirens came voices. Voices he recognised. Shouting. He gripped El’s wrists as the smoky ghosts of people he barely recognised began to drift around them, invisible to the eye, but somehow still present.

“El…”

“Something’s wrong.” The girl bristled, like she could see more than he could.

“…It’s Mike, isn’t it?”

El suddenly jerked to the side, ripping her arms from his grip, flinching from something he couldn’t see. When she looked up, there was an urgent need, a burning trust in those eyes that gripped his heart with dread.

“You have the map. In you.”

“I… what?”

“Find him. Please.”

Then, before he even had a chance to say yes, she snatched the front of his sweater and threw him back. He could only watch, staggering, as she was enveloped by the curtain of darkness once again.

~*~

Mike gulped. Maybe Step 2 was a bad idea.

The red light dimmed.

A roar tore through the air. Feet pounded.

 _Flare_.

Jason was lunging for him, driving him back into Nancy’s arms.

_Dim._

The man’s shouting was cut unexpectedly short. Crashing. Flailing. Though Mike clenched, expecting to feel hands around his throat, none came.

 _Flare_.

And then he saw why. Jonathan was caught in a painful-looking arm-lock, though he continued to fight with animal ferocity-

_Dim._

There was a sudden crash. The table jerked into Mike’s leg. Nancy screamed.

 _Flare_.

Jason was on the floor, his gun in mid-air between Jonathan’s hand and the corner of the room. The older boy waved to them.

“Come on, let’s go!”

Mike didn’t wait for the next light dim. His long stride made short work of the jump over Jason’s lifeless body. The man might well have been dead, but he didn’t look that hard. All he noticed was the battered walkie on the man’s belt garbling away to itself.

_“All units… fire in Sector 4… fire in Sector 4…”_

~*~

Steve tossed the gasoline cannister into the undergrowth, wiping his hands down his trousers. Turning his back to the make-shift bonfire now raging behind him, he scanned the woods for a sign of his companion.

“We’re all out,” he called, overly loud. “Better hope we don’t run out on the way home.”

“Good thing there’s a gas station nearby then, right?” With a rustle, Max appeared from behind a thicket, her arms full to dropping with dry pine needles, brown leaves, and thin, crackling sticks. She side-eyed the cannister as she passed. “Don’t throw your shit in the forest, Steve. We might need that.”

It took the movement of her whole body to toss her cargo onto the blaze, Steve grabbing her arm and dragging her back as the flames licked higher. A brief glance at his face found him nodding, impressed.

“That might just do it.”

Max turned, ducking under Steve’s arm and surveying the compound. The parade square was sluggishly filling with soldiers who looked like they didn’t quite know what to do, and for a moment, she couldn’t quite place why everything suddenly looked so different.

Then, it hit her. “Steve… the lights are out.”

The older boy whipped around. “Whoa. Holy shit.”

Sure, it was only half of the top floor that seemed to have lost power, but even so, the slow, steady pulse of red light from the windows was nothing if it wasn’t ominous.

“I guess they already had a plan?” Steve shrugged haplessly, just a little peeved. “We never needed to dump all my gas, after all.”

“Are you kidding me?!” the younger girl barked. “Look at those soldiers! You think they can get past them by turning a few lights off?” She turned back, glaring again through narrowed eyes. “We gotta up our game…”

He hated to admit it, but he could see her point. With the problems in the building, it would be twice as hard to get the soldiers’ attention. Not that he was great at drawing attention to himself. Not in a good way, anyway. He remembered the lengths he used to go to just to get his dad to look at him.

The only thing that ever really worked was stealing his mum’s hairspray to give his Six-Million Dollar Man something real to fight. Taking the spare lighter from the kitchen drawer, tying an already decidedly ragged teddy bear up beside the pool, holding Maskatron as he took aim…

“… I have an idea. But if you tell anyone, you’re in deep shit, you hear me?”

~*~

Mike lead the charge into the corridor, looking left and right, trying to remember the way they’d come in. Decided on left. There were lights at the end of that corridor, anyway. The pounding and squeaking of trainers at his heels were a reassuring sound as they twisted and turned through better-lit corridors. He was going to get out. They all were.

All except…

“We have to find El.” Mike span around just in time to see Jonathan and Nancy’s faces morph from elated triumph to shock horror.

“Stop right there.”

Mike skidded to a halt at the sight of the lone figure at the end of the hallway. Bristling. Dangerous. Wafting the scent of _Yves Saint Laurent._

“Don’t move,” Commander Walsh trilled, pulling a hefty pistol from her belt and holding it up towards them.

 

~*~

There was too much going on – everything was getting confusing. El’s powers tugged her attention in so many directions as people passed her: soldiers sprinting to stations; scientists taking cover; assistants too scared to know where they were running. It was too much.

Too much. El wrapped her hands around her ears, eyes squeezed shut, bent double as the hundreds of consciousnesses pounded into her head, as the sirens wail grew louder, as the red light seeped through her eyelids. She needed one place to go, one person to follow, to focus on, but it was loud, too loud, and she couldn’t find Mike through the noise.

Staggering, she reached beyond the building, beyond the compound, looking for someone, anyone, who was far enough away that the noise would stop.

The sirens faded, the voices died down and grew into soft, ghostly echoes, and the light beyond her closed lids seemed to settle, to become just a delicately glimmering glow. Now the butting of hundreds of minds became the sturdy rocks of just two, and a flickering heat pressed itself into her cheek.

Panting, El steadied herself. Straightening, she dropped her arms to her sides and let her lashes cautiously part.

Before her was a roaring fire, wider than she could stretch her arms and tall, flames reaching up into the starry night and nipping the branches of the endless pines above. Within it, dried leaves and rotting pine wood crackled and burned, letting off a sickly-sweet smell of sap and fuelling the fire so that the heat was enough to make her step back.

 _“Take cover!”_ A voice cried, and El watched two figures come out from behind the bonfire, sprinting for the safety of a thick, fallen log. In the flames, something shuddered and hissed. She stumbled back, transfixed. The hiss became a scream. Then, with a resounding _boom!_ , whatever it was exploded into a fireball.

Shrapnel splintered the air around her, but never found its target, thudding instead into the mud and the trunks of the trees. Wide eyes flashing, El tore her gaze from the fire, instead surveying the log from which two careful heads appeared.

 _“Yes!”_ The larger of the two whooped, his arms leaping above his head. And as soon as he hopped over the log, a hand rearranging the chestnut hair styled on top of his head, she knew exactly who he was.

“Steve…”

 _“Yeah, yeah, keep your hair on,”_ his smaller companion goaded as she, too, appeared at his side. _Max_. El’s heart sank just a little, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. Somehow, she couldn’t quite _remember_ why.

Max turned to look somewhere beyond her shoulder, and, following her gaze, El found herself looking at the outside of the compound, at the building she was inside. She could even see the little slit window she was currently sitting beneath. It gave a her a slightly odd feeling, a bit like looking in a mirror and watching your reflection looking the wrong way.

 _“It wasn’t enough.”_ El whipped around towards Max’s voice. _“How many cans of that stuff have you got?”_

 _“That was my only one.”_ Steve shrugged. When Max threw him a foul look, he raised his eyebrows. _“What?! You think I want the whole world knowing about this?”_

 _“Pretty sure the world will get over the fact you use Farrah Fawcett spray, Steve,”_ Max snorted, amused. Then, her jaw dropped. _“Wait a second… that was you, wasn’t it? You made that ridiculous mess of Dustin’s hair for the Snow Ball!”_

Steve rounded on her as she cackled. _“Hey, first of all, he looked great, okay? And second, he did that himself. I just gave him the instructions.”_

Nothing was going to quell Max’s laughter (not even holding her own nose), so Steve gave up with a sigh and turned back to the fire. El, in turn, began to circle around them, curious. Of course, there _was_ a reason they were throwing hairspray on the fire. She was just trying to put two and two together.

There was still no sign of movement from the crowds amassed on the concrete.

 _“They’re just watching us,”_ he murmured.

Max’s last giggles died on her tongue, and she looked between the building and the fire. _“They think we’re some group of kids messing around. It’s still not enough to get them over here.”_

Of course. Finally, El understood. The two of them were trying to make an opening, to give them all time to escape.

 _“Come on. There’s gotta be something bigger around here,”_ Max said slowly, turning to scour the undergrowth. Steve followed her lead.

El looked back to the fire, and then again at the building.

Steve’s voice was drifting further away as he shouted out, _“You think Mike knows we’re here yet?”_

But she hadn’t noticed Max’s footsteps ambling slowly closer until Steve’s voice made her turn. Finding Max’s face inches from her own gave El quite a shock, and even more so that the other girl stopped dead in her tracks, almost like she could feel her presence.

Max looked her dead in the eye. No, she _could_ feel her presence.

_“I… think Mike might be about to find out…”_

~*~

 “I don’t mean to be… _unnecessary_ , but you three – well, you hardly left me a choice.”

The stumpy little heels she had on her feet clicked dangerously as she slowly advanced towards them.

“ _We_ left _you_ no choice?!” Mike squared his shoulders. “You kidnapped my- I mean, our friend!”

The faux-friendly little smile on Walsh’s face disintegrated immediately. “And you took out half my electrical systems while your little friends outside are trying to set fire to my fence.”

He baulked. _Your little friends outside_. As far as he knew, he didn’t _have_ any little friends outside.

~*~

“What did you say?” Steve called back. Max had gone quiet and very, very still. After another moment, he turned back to face her, watched her staring at the ground, lips soft and eyes narrowed, brow creased like there was something she couldn’t quite understand.

“Hey, you okay, shithead?”

Her head jerked up, swallowing, a shiver running across her shoulders like a breath of wind across the back of her neck. “Yeah. Yeah, I… just…”

Steve’s stomach dropped into his legs. Was that drug somehow still in her system? Was she going down? Did he need a doctor?

All of a sudden, his car bucked on its wheels, and the alarm went off with a jolt. His first instinct was to get to Max, to grab her before anyone else could. Only then, when she was trapped against him, could he gawk in horror at the sight of his Beemer skipping backwards towards the road, tyres scudding against the ground.

“What the hell…”

The next moment, everything stopped. The car came to rest just as suddenly as it had started, the alarm cut out, so that he found himself questioning whether it had ever really happened. That was, until the fog lights turned themselves on, casting a blinding glow.

“I knew it,” Max breathed.

Steve scowled, eyes wide. “Wh… What?”

“It’s her. It’s El.” Breaking free of his grip, Max turned to face him. “She’s trying to tell us something.”

As though following some unspoken command, the two of them ran, side-by-side, towards the patch of illuminated undergrowth. Plunging their hands in, they fought and tore at it until Max’s fingers struck metal.

~

_Finally, El thought to herself. This job was done. Drawing herself back into the building, she steeled herself for the next objective: find Mike._

~*~

“Don’t think I didn’t see your little escape plan. Did you really think you’d get all that way across the compound without getting shot?”

There was a madness in Walsh’s eyes now, a certain unhinged-ness that made Mike rock on his toes.

“We don’t know anything about that,” Nancy said flatly, in a voice that bit down on the wavering it longed to hold.

Walsh didn’t smile. “Call them off. Now.”

Jonathan looked between his friends. “W-we can’t. We don’t know who they are!”

“Liar.” The woman took a breath, like she was barely in control, then reached into her back pocket and produced a bulky, black object. When she held it out, Mike instantly recognised his Super-Comm. “What would you have this for if not for communicating?”

Which he’d left on the back seat.

Which meant they had the car.

_Shit._

_Slam._

Mike was barely aware that the woman’s hand had moved until he felt the back of his head connect with the wall, the pressure driving through his sternum sending jolts of pain through his chest. That, and the cold, certain doom of a gun barrel leaving deep marks in his forehead.

“Mike!”

He’d never heard Nancy scream like that. And definitely not for him.

Walsh’s face was inches from his own, her eyes like burning coals set in wrinkled beds of satin, boiling with untold hatred. It was so surreal. Though his heart hammered like never before and bile prickled up the back of his throat, Mike was overwhelmed by how simply _numb_ he felt. His life could end so suddenly that he wouldn’t even know it had happened. What the hell was he _supposed_ to feel?

The pressure on his neck relieved, just for a moment, just long enough for the Super-Comm to clatter into Jonathan’s fumbling arms.

“Call them off.”

“I-I can’t! I’m serious, we don’t know them!”

The radio crackled, like it was taunting them. Mike’s eyelids prickled. Somewhere beyond the fire of Walsh’s stare and the overpowering stench of her perfume, he was aware of his sister’s helpless gaze, eyes so wide they seemed to take up half her head, one hand clasped powerfully in one of Jonathan’s.

He met Walsh’s gaze. “She’ll know if you hurt me.”

“I don’t think she will.”

“Why don’t you kill me and find out?”

For a moment, Walsh considerately licked her lips. Then, her finger tightened on the trigger.

 _Okay. She really is insane._ An abrupt surge in his stomach turned his legs to jelly, and her head was quite suddenly surrounded by a thousand thunderous, twinkling lights.

This was bad. Really bad.

He could really use his mum right now.

The radio buzzed again, and he was sure he could hear someone calling for him above the rush of blood in his ears. Probably Nancy. When he looked to her, though, he realised with a jolt that her lips weren’t moving.

_“Mike.”_

It was coming from the radio.

_“Mike!”_

Walsh’s face dropped. Helpless, he watched as she turned, just slightly, eyes bulging beneath heavy brows. “No…”

A name burbled up from the boy’s gasping throat - “…El...” - and Jonathan slammed his finger into the talk button.

“El, we hear you!”

There was a moment of silence that felt deafening, stretching longer and longer than any other he’d ever heard.

Then, a simple word.

_“Run.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's super long, y'all. Honestly, I love writing El using her powers. It's so much fun to play around with what she can do, as well as putting yourself in there and thinking about how it would actually feel to use the abilities she has.   
> And, of course, Mike's in the shit again.  
> You're all welcome. 
> 
> WSQ


	27. Chapter 27

Before the metal even hit the flames, Steve had his hand around Max’s arm, dragging her with him as he sprinted for cover. Side by side, in one practiced movement, they leapt over the body of the enormous log and crashed into the shadow of its other side.

“Was that really necessary?” Max hissed, though her voice remained hushed, like it could somehow set this thing off faster.

“You ever see one of these things go up?” He replied sharply. Her falling gaze told him everything he needed to know.

Of all the pieces of junk they’d seen abandoned in the woods around here, an LPG cannister was by far the most terrifying. Who could know how many months it must have been sitting out here, slowly rusting under the rain? Even more frightening was the fact that when Steve had lifted it, he could still feel liquid inside.

A shiver ran down his spine, and he grabbed hold of Max, pulling her further down into shelter and praying that they might somehow pull through all of this.

~*~

Walsh whipped around to stare at the radio, eyes bulging, plan falling down around her ears.

The next moment, the world dissolved into a chaos of movement. A roar ripped through the air, an immense noise that trembled and tremored and ripped through their bodies, tearing everything to pieces and leaving a soft hiss in its place.

For a brief moment, Mike could breath again. The next thing he was sure of was that he was on the floor, and Nancy was gripping his arms and yelling, screaming that he had to _get up, get up!_ And somewhere through the numbness, he found the strength to push, to get up, to run, fingers tight around his sister’s wrist.

But there was an image floating through his head that he couldn’t quite explain. An image of a girl standing and watching him.

~*~

Max couldn’t hear a thing. Clinging to Steve just as he held tight to her, her body rang with aftershocks, tremors running up and down her arms and legs. Head pounding, breath catching in her throat, she desperately willed her brain to catch up.

Somehow, she couldn’t quite place the moment the cannister had actually exploded. It had felt like heat. That was all. Just a terrible, unbearable heat that brought with it a ground-shattering earthquake and a rush of hot wind strong enough to press the log behind them harder into their backs. The death-rumble stole all sound and left in its place a hollow, shimmering ring.

On the other side of her tightly closed eyelids was a soft, trembling glow. It was almost hard to pry them open, to ask her quivering body to cooperate as she released her grip on Steve, pushed herself upright, turned to peer over the edge of the now shrapnel-peppered log.

But she had to see it. She had to let her heart drop from her breast at the sight of the roiling, churning fireball that hung in the sky above them. Watching, transfixed, as the red glow was eaten by the hungry, black smoke.

A hand on her arm took her by surprise, and she recoiled from Steve’s urgent touch. It took her a moment to realise that he was trying to speak, to tell her something, but no sound was passing his lips.

_No, wait._

It was her ears. She still couldn’t hear anything.

Before she had time to think about it, Steve’s hands flew up in a desperate gesture to _run!_ Whipping around, her gaze alighted on the compound, on what looked like a thousand angry ants swarming towards them.

Angry ants with machine guns.

Max took Steve’s outstretched hand, and together, they ran.

~*~

The explosion tore El back into her body, faster than she was expecting, so that, with a cry, she found herself keeling over onto her side. It hurt, slamming back into her body like that. She reeled, head spinning.

Then, like a switch flicked, she bolted upright, using the bed to haul herself to her feet. They’d done it. Max and Steve had created their diversion. Mike was free.

It was time to run.

As she made for the door, however, she realised the corridor outside the Cell was filling with noise. Shouts, boots, guns cocking. Where there was a slight gap between the heavy door and the frame, she peered through and confirmed it.

The corridor was full of soldiers, and they were all already aiming for her.

El considered just blowing the door off and crushing them all. She could probably do that. Damn right, she was angry enough. But something else stirred in her, that same feeling she’d felt all those months ago, with Kali. In the Man’s sitting room. When she’d spotted his children in a photograph on the floor.

The photograph that her power had thrown onto the tiles, the glass she had shattered into a thousand tiny fragments.

_Not again._

She couldn’t change Kali, couldn’t change her decision to kill. But that didn’t mean that El had to become like her. She had a choice, and she chose to give the men a chance to escape. Not for their sakes, but for their children.

Slowly, she turned to the wall. It was three feet of solid concrete, only one small, thin window high up near the ceiling. Sweeping a hand across her body, she easily swept the metal bed aside into the other wall, leaving nothing in her way but solid blocks.

Beyond the wall, her powers told her, was the grass. And beyond the grass was a fence, and beyond the fence…

_Home._

El raised her hands and pushed.

And pushed.

But the wall wouldn’t budge.

A warm trickle ran from her nose as she doubled over, hands on her knees, heaving in a few deep, calm breaths.

_Come on._

Somewhere out there, she could feel a familiar fear, like a bad smell caught in her nostrils. And not just one smell, but several, from everywhere. There were soldiers she didn’t know, and people upstairs in nice suits. And she could detect the terror of Steve and Max, drifting to her from far, far beyond the compound. And closer, Jonathan and Nancy’s fear shifted like they were on the move.

But Mike was strongest. He was afraid of the woman with the gun.

~*~

Jonathan skidded to a halt beyond the next corner. Mike heard the soldiers’ shouts before he even got there, let his body mimic Nancy as she, too, stumbled to a halt, her hand still vice-like on his wrist.

His head was beginning to clear, at least. Or, so he hoped.

“Halt! Stay where you are!”

Two guns appeared from the darkness at the other end of the corridor, well-trained soldiers walking in perfect step behind them. He froze up. How many more times did he have to nearly die today?

“The fire exit,” Jonathan breathed uneasily. Mike forced his eyes from the deadly barrels, scanned the less polished, more industrial corridor. Noted the door halfway down the hall, a lit green sign hovering invitingly above. And the scruffy, patchy lino floor, the peeling paint, the pipework running up and down the walls.

_The pipework…_

Jonathan lifted the gun, but Mike was fully aware he wouldn’t have the guts to kill one of them. Instead, he wrenched his hand from his sister’s grip and pointed to a thick piece of pipe running up and across the ceiling.

“Jonathan! Hit that pipe!”

The older boy took shaky aim, but the soldiers had started running, snarls twisting their faces, and there was no way in hell he would be able to do it. Instead, he dropped his trembling arms and handed the pistol to Nancy.

His sister took a breath, pointed, and fired.

Immediately, the corridor was filled with the hiss of high-pressure water spraying in a curtain from the broken pipe. Jonathan darted for the fire exit, slamming into the bar release and holding it open as he waved his companions through.

The exit itself was stairs. Just hundreds of sharp metal stairs, swirling around in an endless spiral that, at this speed, made Mike feel slightly nauseous. Maybe if the stairwell wasn’t enclosed by bare white walls, it might have made it easier, but with no landmarks to settle his brain, he found himself having to cling to the barrier just to keep going in the right direction.

Which way was up? The sick feeling spread up into his chest, and his found his lungs beginning to heave, to ache. Once again, stars crept into his vision, just like the ones he’d seen around-

 _Her._ Mike staggered to a halt, clinging to the barrier as Walsh’s face seemed to pounce at him from the darkest corner of his mind. When he opened his eyes, she seemed to hide in every corner, the bulging wrinkles crowning the edges of her wide, soulless eyes. Her face oozed with evil, dark and thick and suffocating.

“Mike…?”

It felt like he couldn’t breath, like he was drowning in the black-gold stench of _Yves-Saint-Laurent-_

“Mike!”

His head jerked up at the sound of Nancy’s voice. Suddenly, the black oil was washed away by the sharp scent of sweat, and his sister gripped his face in her hands and held him steady.

“Hey! Hey… you okay in there?”

He gulped. Somehow, he wasn’t sure he could trust his own voice.

“I… I…” Mike wished he could shake himself. He took a gulp of air. “Just… dizzy. From the stairs.”

There was no way in hell Nancy believed him, but her lips parted in a half-smile anyway. “Listen, you’re okay now. Okay? You’re gonna be okay.”

Her thumb found his forehead, scrubbed at the mark he didn’t realised was still pressed into the thin, clammy skin.

“Mike?”

The sound of his name was so sudden, so grounding, it almost felt like he could cling to it and drag himself back from wherever he’d fallen.

“Mike.”

His hands found her wrists. “Y-yeah. Yeah, I know.”

His sister pulled him towards her, wrapped her arms around him and gave him a squeeze so tight, it hurt. But the hurt was _good_. It spread through his body, brought him to life again.

Just in time to see the awkward look on Jonathan’s face as he stood watching.

A sudden _crash_ at the top of the stairs jerked them all back to reality. Boots hammered the top steps. Guns clattered and shook.

It was time to go.

~*~

The wall was impossibly huge. Solid. Immovable.

El stared hard at it, like she might be able to find a crack, somewhere. A weakness she could dig her powers into and claw herself a hole. But there was nothing.

_I can’t…_

Her eyes slid closed, and in the darkness, a face came forward. Soft, with huge, wide eyes that you could just tell had seen more than their fair share of pain. Back-combed purple-black hair sticking up from all over her head, save for the one shaved patch above her right ear. Dark powder rings around her eyes, deep purple lipstick. El could see her as plain as the day she moved the train car.

_Last night, you told me you lifted a van once._

El swallowed. She knew what was coming.

_The Bad Men were trying to take you away again, and that made you angry._

And Kali had been brimming with anger. It lapped and overflowed, poured from every corner of her being. Drove her to do crazy things. Hurtful things. But for El, there was no anger to focus on – not anymore. Whenever she thought of her friends, all she felt was…

_Love._

Now that, she had gallons of. Enough to fill ten train cars, twenty, a hundred. Her friends were out there, risking their lives for her, to get her back, to give her a chance to escape. She couldn’t give up. She wouldn’t let herself.

So, she let her perception flow out, let the world fade to darkness, tried to bring them all together in her mind. Close by, Nancy and Jonathan ran, only stumbling to a halt when they realised Mike was no longer with them. He had frozen, eyes somewhere else. Afraid.

_“Mike?”_

_“She’s still in there. We have to go back.”_

A deep longing blossomed in her breast. After everything that woman had done, he still wanted to find her, to save her.

Then, she felt a shift. From behind her came the lashing of staggering feet through a sea of dry pine needles, and El whipped around to see Max and Steve, sprinting for their lives. They cried out as bullets whipped the ground near their feet, glancing off the fence beside them.

El’s jaw dropped. They were going to be killed.

A door slammed. Whipping around again, El came face-to-face with the woman, ducked out of the way just in time to avoid passing straight through her. Her guard was at her heels like a loyal puppy.

_“Find the teenagers. Kill them, if you can.”_

El closed her eyes. There was no anger out here. All she felt was… scared.

_I was once just like you, you know that?_

El flinched at the words in the back of her head. She didn’t need to hear them again.

_I found a place to hide. A family. A home._

She was looking far away now, far too far away. To a sitting room, a sofa she’d slept on, a carpet still stained with the cocoa she’d dropped on it. Familiar hands washed over a map of the town, _her_ town.

_But they couldn’t help me._

Will Byers and his mother, side by side on the sofa, with Lucas and Dustin at their feet. They were talking, but their words were lost. Too far away.

_So eventually, I lost them too._

She didn’t need to hear them, anyway. All she needed to know what that they were searching. Looking for Hopper.

There it was, catching deep inside her belly like the spark on a gas stove, igniting the flame she had let grow quiet and dormant. And, for a moment, the fire was shocking. It burned. It almost hurt.

_They can’t save you, Jane._

And yet, they were still going to try. El closed her eyes. Let Kali fade away, replaced her face with all the others. Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas. Max. Steve. Jonathan and Nancy.

They all needed her.

The fire in her gut grew brighter, stronger, but it didn’t hurt any more. Now, it filled her, spread from her core out into her arms, her legs, her chest. Her power swelled. She knew she could do it. She could feel it.

 _They_ can _save me._  

_They already have._

With a deep, centring breath, El brought herself back into her own body. Gently, this time. And just in time – a moment later, a key turned in the lock, and the door swung open. Almost in slow motion, soldiers piled in, guns raised, pointing to her heart.

“Stay where you are.”

They didn’t frighten her. El let her lazy gaze wash over them all, then turned her back.

“I mean it! Stay still!”

Her eyes fell on the wall once again. Immovable. Impossible. And yet, as she let the flames burn higher inside her, let her awareness flow into the concrete, she could feel the light pouring through from the other side.

Out there was Mike. Max. Will. Hopper.

She needed to get to them.

El raised her hands, power surging through her veins.

“The hell is she doing?”

“Hey, kid! Turn around!”

_No._

As she heard a gun primed, her power pealed from her back in a wave that sent them all crashing to the floor. A shot went off, buried itself in the ceiling.

Her fingers twisted into claws as she let the inferno build inside her. Then, finally, like an exhaling breath, it poured from her body in a great wave that slammed into the breezeblocks and braced against them. Bricks and mortar cracked, bent, buckled. Paint flaked. The building trembled.

 _More_.

El gritted her teeth, letting out a low groan as she pushed forward. Cracks flickered up through the wall. It was going. Going. Just a little more.

_More…_

Something in her faltered, tried to give. Exhausted. Her lungs strained for oxygen, breath coming in sharp, painful stabs. More than that – her straining muscles trembled, aching, burning. The flames in her stomach lapped up into her head, and it _hurt._

But she’d felt this before.

_Find the anger._

_Focus on that._

_Not the train._

_Not it’s weight._

The wall couldn’t win. If it did, her friends would die.

A scream rose in her throat, and she let it tear from her lips.

The wall shuddered – trembled – then it shattered into a thousand arching, flying pieces of dust.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> It continues to baffle me that, though I haven't updated in months, people are STILL reading this fic, STILL leaving Kudos for me, and I'm so utterly flattered that you all like it so much. Seriously, thank you! So, I had this chapter in storage in case I could ever come back to this fic, but when Doctor Who came back for Series 12, I kind of totally lost interest in writing it. 
> 
> I don't know if I can continue, in all honesty. But, since the world seems to be going into lockdown, I think we all need a little something to take our minds off it all. So, here you are - a gift to anyone who's still interested. And if enough people want it, I might even be able to carry on writing it - very slowly!
> 
> All my love goes out to everyone who's struggling at this awful time. The dark times never last. My heart is with you. Stay strong.


	28. Chapter 28

Time seemed to stand still for just a moment, like the world was waiting in bated breath. Mike felt a chill run through him, almost like he knew it was going to happen before it did.

In the same moment that Commander Walsh laid eyes on him from across the courtyard, the concrete wall that stood alongside them shattered into a billion pieces with a sound like a car crash. Mike threw himself out of the way, Nancy and Jonathan following his lead and covering their heads as tiny pieces of stone rained down on them from above.

And everything stopped.

As the showering eased, Mike gingerly raised his head, choking the thick dust from his lungs. Before anything else, he was aware of the quiet. There was no movement, no wind rustle in the trees or shouting or screaming. Even the birds were silent.

The ground itself looked like a wasteland, a thick powder of dust settling on everything in a 500 yard radius and hanging in the air like the smoke of an explosion. He half-expected to smell the sour tang of gasoline or taste the metallic smoke, but there was nothing left behind except a strange electricity carried by the air.

He turned to look as the building groaned. The second floor hung precariously over the gaping, dust-filled cavity, bricks and ironwork sagging inwards, guizers of rubble falling like streamers from cracks threatening to grow. Then, all of a sudden, the floodlight caught movement from within the murk.

Wide-eyed, Mike watched the small figure clamber up the wreckage and stone. There was no need to wonder who it was – there was only one person he knew who could take out a concrete wall like that.

El stepped onto the grass with all the presence of a queen, clothes caked in white powder, dust clinging to the stripes of fresh, scarlet blood painted beneath each nostril. Though she was shaking, unsteady, the expression on her face roared with power.

Mike’s face blossomed into the widest grin.

~

El’s whole body felt like it buzzed with electricity. Her fingers tingled, and her every breath felt like it filled her whole body. The cold of the outside air struck her, and she revelled in it, sucking it deep into her lungs, savouring the taste of pine trees that stuck to her tongue.

_Free. Finally._

“El!” She caught the sound of a familiar voice. For a moment, she wondered if she was just picking it up in her head, but as she slowly turned towards it, she spotted him.

Mike. _Her_ Mike. He leapt out of the thick rubble like a creature reborn from the ash, taking a running jump towards her as though a magnet was pulling them together. 

But the swift hands of Nancy and Jonathan were quicker, snatching him by the hood and hauling him back. Her joy soured, watching helplessly as Mike tried to fight, but as his eyes drifted over her shoulder, his anger turned to fear.

She frowned, frozen, uncomprehending.

“El!” He tugged forward again. “El, _look out!”_

She span around just in time to watch the gun barrel rise, a deadly eye glaring through the sight. A short woman and a tall man – somehow, they seemed familiar. Some strange haze seemed to hang around them, but El was sure she should have known them.

The woman leaned in and muttered something, and, almost imperceptibly, the gun barrel shifted its target. The girl’s brow creased, briefly, before she turned to look over her shoulder, caught sight of Mike, Nancy and Jonathan still standing there in the open, gawking.

_No._

El’s head whipped back, and there was fire in her eyes. They weren’t hurting her family. She wouldn’t let them.

The man shifted his hold on the gun, taking aim. Then, in one swift, practiced movement, it flew out of his hands, flying in a graceful arc over their heads and clattering to the ground a hundred yards away.

 _Try me,_ said the look in El’s eyes.

The woman took a few paces towards her. “So that’s the game you want to play, is it?”

El bristled. “Don’t hurt them.”

“Oh, you wait,” Walsh replied with a sneer. “When your Papa sees what you’ve done, what _is_ he going to think?”

She recoiled, a shard of ice lodging itself into her heart, threatening to douse the flames of her power.

“Papa is dead,” she breathed.

The woman simply laughed.

At the furthest edge of the compound, El’s sharp eyes caught movement, and her gaze shifted from the woman to the gathering, formless throng bustling beyond the floodlights. It was only as the first of them hit the floodlight that she recognised them. Soldiers. Black outfits and shining badges and rattling guns.

Walsh shivered with excitement as she raised a walkie to her lips. “All units. Keep the girl alive. Kill the rest.”

 _“No!”_ A blaze of fire tore from El’s lips, and she gathered it and forced it in Walsh’s direction, slamming the woman into the ground. Her guard ran forward to mount a defence, but he got no more than three paces before he, too, was flung into the dust.

Shots shredded the air, hammering the grass close to where she stood.

From behind her, Jonathan cried out. “Eleven! Run!”

She whipped around, caught Mike’s eye as Nancy dragged him towards the fence. Jonathan was close behind, waving her to follow them. But, though her feet spurred swiftly through the grass, the shouting of the soldiers grew closer and an unsettling feeling squeezed her gut.

They wouldn’t make it.

The soldiers were too fast. They were closing the gap, cutting off her friend’s escape route.

Not only that, but clearly, some hadn’t got the memo. _Keep the girl alive._ The grass nearby was tossed into the air by the thud of bullets: close; too close for comfort.

“Mike!”

As soon as she yelped, she wished she hadn’t. Her boyfriend turned to look, slowing, losing valuable moments. She watched the flashes of metal go whizzing past him, flinging clods of earth up over them all.

The hoard was closing in. 

El stopped running. Planted her feet. Gathered her strength in her core.

The men went flying backwards, crashing into each other like paper people hit by the tide. El watched with a rush of relief as Mike, Nancy and Jonathan dived behind the cover of a gaggle of parked vehicles, their way to the fence left clear.

Except one of those vehicles didn’t belong there.

~

“Shit!” Nancy bit the word out as her stomach sank through her knees. Of all the worst things that could happen, this was objectively _worse_ than the worst.

Mike sprinted up to Jonathan’s battered old car, squeezed in between hulking military vehicles, and tried the back door, but it was locked. “Where are the keys?!”

Jonathan slammed onto his knees, his hands hurriedly scrabbling around the front tire, under the wheel arch, just in case. “No, no, _no…_ ”

“Smash the window,” Nancy said, her voice forced and level. She watched hopelessly as her boyfriend ignored her, trying the other front wheel. “Jonathan. The window!”

“I _can’t!”_

She wrinkled her nose in distaste, but only for a moment – in the next breath, she had her cardigan off her shoulders and wrapped around her arm, her elbow passing straight through the glass on the driver’s side.

Her brother simply stared. How the hell didn’t that hurt?!

“You don’t honestly know how to hotwire a car?”

“No,” she muttered, “But Jonathan does.”

Her boyfriend appeared at Mike’s shoulder, looking at once confused, impressed and indignant. “You know I can’t afford a new window, right?”

Mike stared for a moment, then deadpanned, “I’d rather be cold than dead.”

~

It was taking all of El’s concentration to hold back the soldiers as they pressing into one another, bodies upon bodies. The moment she caught the roar of a car engine, the first of the men broke through and surged towards her, a hail of bullets their constant companion.

El ran for the cover of the closest armoured vehicle. It was a miracle she wasn’t hit. Crashing to her knees behind the hulking metal tire, she watched helplessly as Jonathan’s car stuttered into life, sparks showering from a multitude of holes appearing in the paintwork.

She bit down on her lip, hard. If they hurt any of her friends…

No. She couldn’t let that happen.

Drawing a billowing breath, letting the flames climb inside her, El rose to her feet, let her power flow out into the cold, heavy metal behind her. The armoured vehicle shuddered as she took hold, pressed it, tested its weight.

A moment later, it arched through the air and slammed into the line of soldiers, a deadly projectile that crushed those beneath it and enveloped those who weren’t in a sour, scorching mixture of blazing petrol and blood.

~

Max’s trainers were definitely not grippy enough for this. As she scrambled up the bank, her legs kept sliding from under her, and more than once, her chin connected with the soft, wet turf. As she reached the gap in the fence, however, she found herself fixed to the spot.

A hundred feet away, a fire raged, and the flickering, dying flames caught the small figure of Eleven, illuminated like the angel of death, standing tall over the bodies of the people who sought to hurt her.

Max had to admit it. It was _cool._

“Come on, dickhead! Hurry up!” At the bottom of the bank, Steve leaned out of the window of his beloved Beemer, the engine whining an impatient melody. “D’you see her?”

Max ignored him, her face falling in dread as shapes began to move in the grass. In the compound, El, too, began to faulter. Guns rattled and cocked as soldiers began to pick themselves up. Maybe she’d squashed a few, but there were just too many of them. One vehicle wasn’t enough for all of them.

She watched the muscles in El’s throat bob in horror. _Now or never._

 _“El!”_ Max screamed at the top of her lungs. The girl in the compound turned to her, panic freezing her bare feet to the ground. “Come on, let’s go!”

She latched her fingers into the links in the fence, tugging the split wide enough for the other girl to squeeze through.

El sprinted just as the soldiers opened fire.

Hands up to her head, she raced, full tilt. Grass sprayed around her, bullets ripping the air. Close. Way too close.

Max stretched out a hand.

A moment later, fingers snatched her palm, vice-like, filthy and trembling. And, of course, as she twisted, Max’s trainers lost their grips.

Together, the girls tumbled down the bank. Who was pulling the other, it wasn’t clear; but it was Max who hauled the two of them to their feet, who ripped open the back of the car, shoving the other girl inside. She then tumbled into the pale leather and slammed the door.

“ _Drive!”_

The Beemer snarled, tires howling against tarmac as it fought for grip. A few stray bullets pinged off the bumper, but Steve’s car was way too fast. The outside world dissolved into a blur.

And there beside her, Max felt El finally relax.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is especially for Snurvel, without whom, I would never have got back into writing this fic, and there wouldn't be another chapter on the way again! Thank you for your kind words!
> 
> I hope this can provide some escape for those of you trapped by the pandemic, physically, mentally or any other way! Stay strong, guys!
> 
> WSQ

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! I've been toying with this idea for a little while and now that I've got a big enouhg buffer, I think it's about time to bring it to you all! Hope you enjoy, 'cos you're in for a long one...
> 
> WSQ


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